


A Wolf at the Door

by squiderella



Series: Tooth and Talon [1]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, content warning for roger being himself, let's do the time warp again (structurally)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 110,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squiderella/pseuds/squiderella
Summary: In an alternate timeline where Prince Jonathan died unexpectedly as a young knight, Keladry of Mindelan begins her page training.
Relationships: Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau/Thayet jian Wilima, Delia of Eldorne/Roger of Conté, Eventual Alexander of Tirragen/Thom of Trebond, Implied Past Roger of Conté/Thom of Trebond
Series: Tooth and Talon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807024
Comments: 171
Kudos: 113





	1. The Girl Page

**452 H.E.**

As she read over the letter from the training master for a third time, Kel took stock of her bruises. A black eye from the fight with the village boys that morning, a bruise on her thigh from a rock she’d clipped throwing herself out of the way of the spidren’s web, a mottled scrape on her knee from climbing the bluff. All told, no real damage.

She set the letter aside, disliking the sour taste that rereading it had left in her mouth, and moved onto the list of rules Lord Wyldon had sent with it. Kel liked rules; they were a solid, comforting thing. She wanted to memorize these rules before she got to the palace.

The raw meat their cook had given her was warm against her black eye. It had done its work, she decided — or at least, she was tired of holding it there. She set it back on the plate she’d been given and went to the basin in the corner to wash her hands. It was time to start packing, if she was to leave for Corus the day after tomorrow. She was folding her second-best gown when there came a soft knock on her door.

Would she even need gowns, when she got to the palace? She wasn’t sure. The knock came a second time.

“Come in,” she called, and her mother entered, holding a pair of scissors in one hand.

Lady Ilane raised an eyebrow when she saw Kel packing her things. “Up already? You _can_ rest for a few minutes longer, you know. We have the rest of the day to pack, and tomorrow.”

Kel smiled at her. “There’s a lot to do. What are those for?” she asked, nodding toward the pair of scissors.

“Before that letter arrived, you were saying that you wanted to crop your hair before page training started. I thought we might do it now.”

Now was as good a time as any, so Kel sat down again, on the chair by her dressing table, and folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll admit,” her mother said, as she began to cut Kel’s hair, “that I’m still uneasy about letting you go off to the palace by yourself.”

Kel kept her head bowed slightly, watching long locks of her hair fall away to land on the floor or in her lap. “I won’t be alone on the way there,” she pointed out. “I’ll have Papa.”

“True. And I’ve thought about it a great deal, since we first discussed the matter. I think that if anyone can make it through this probationary year and then seven more years of training, it will be you.”

“If they let me stay,” said Kel thoughtfully, letting the uncertainty of the next year settle on her shoulders. “If they let me stay, I’ll be the first lady knight Tortall has had in over a hundred years.”

“Surely you’ve thought about that before,” said her mother, sounding amused. She brushed some fallen hair from one of Kel’s shoulders.

“Not very often.” She had wanted to be a knight, that was all — someone who protected people, someone her family could really be proud of. She didn’t care about being the first anything.

“Well, it won’t do any good worrying about whether or not Lord Wyldon will let you stay on after the first year. You don’t have any control over him.”

“I know. The only thing I can do is the best work I can.”

“Quite right,” said Ilane, stepping back to assess her work. She’d cut Kel’s hair to just below her chin. “Have a look in the mirror, and then tell me if you want it shorter.”

When Wyldon of Cavall left the practice courts that morning, bound for the archery yards, someone slipped out of the doorway of a nearby shed and fell into step with him. He glanced up to see the King’s Champion, who acknowledged him with a nod.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” said Alexander of Tirragen. “So I heard that a girl has applied to become a page.”

It was a bright September morning, with blue skies, birdsong, and the beginnings of a raging headache for Wyldon. “His Majesty agreed with me, when I argued that she should be put on probation for a year. There hasn’t been a female page in over a hundred years — ”

Tirragen cocked his head, looking puzzled. “Have I been knocked on my head one time too many? I could have sworn you just said . . .”

“Openly,” said Wyldon, wishing he’d go away. “There hasn’t openly been a female page, who succeeded in winning her shield, in over a hundred years.”

“That makes more sense. After all, I remember her. Four years younger than me and she could nearly beat me on a good day.”

“I’ve never known you to take much interest in page training,” said Wyldon stiffly.

He shrugged. “It just surprised me. You’ve always been known for your sense of fairness,” he said, making a sour face, “but this seems like moving the archery target. The law didn’t say anything about probation when Roger wrote it three years ago.”

“We both know he wrote that law simply to appease the growing progressive faction at court,” said Wyldon, trying not to recall the way the king had snuck it into the fine print of a tax law he had otherwise supported, and then bullied him into not resigning from his training master post.

Tirragen met his eyes, a bland smile tugging the corners of his mouth up. For years, the man had made a show of being cheerfully, almost aggressively, uninterested in politics, but somewhere under that careless facade lurked his real opinions. “You must have known a girl would want to try for her knighthood sooner or later,” he said. One of his friends called to him from the tilting yards, and Tirragen waved to him. It was the wave of a man with nothing more on his mind than training, and perhaps a hearty meal afterward.

Wyldon had tensed. “It is not in the nature of women to want to — ”

“Weren’t there quite a lot of female knights at one point or another, though? Of course, nowadays we only see other men in our line of work, so I wonder if it’s possible you don't know the nature of women as well as you think you do.”

“I wasn't aware that was a subject you were very familiar with,” said Wyldon, narrowing his eyes at him. Tirragen was unmarried, and court gossip suggested he always would be.

Tirragen shrugged again. “I’ll admit, I’m curious how the year will go. What if she does well? As well as Alanna of Trebond, say? As well as the boys around her or, gods forbid, better?”

Wyldon hadn’t even thought about that. “Then I suppose,” he said through gritted teeth, “she’ll have to be allowed to stay.”

**437 H.E., Fifteen Years Earlier**

On the way back to his rooms, Duke Roger acquired a smaller shadow. He had nearly reached the staircase leading to his outer door when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Alex melt out of a dim hallway branching off from the main corridor, and fall into step with him. “Is it true?” asked Alex, as they went up the stairs together.

Roger put his hand on the door, waiting for the guarding spells to recognize him. “You didn’t speak with Lady Alanna herself before she left the palace?” he asked, as he opened the door.

“I didn’t have the chance.” He followed Roger into the sitting room, where there was a fire blazing in the hearth to combat the chill October night. “So it’s true, then. You met Alan — Alanna? — wandering the city in disguise, and now the king knows everything and she’s left Corus.”

“You’ve summed it up neatly. The only thing I would correct is this: I met Lady Alanna in the city marketplace wearing a different disguise than she usually does. For when have we ever seen her without a disguise?”

Alex sprawled in the chair beside the fire, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Gods, this is strange. You’re certain?”

“Quite certain.” Roger crossed to the cabinet where he kept his wine and goblets. He poured them each a glass, filling Alex’s almost to the brim. “I’m sorry. This must hurt your pride.”

Alex shook his head. “It does, but it’s not just — he lied to us for years.” He took a gulp of wine from the goblet Roger handed him. “She lied to us for years. Did anyone know?”

“Apparently my cousin knew,” said Roger dryly, resting his forearms on the back of the chair. “Which doesn’t come as a surprise. She was his squire, after all. And it seems that Gareth the Younger and Myles of Olau were also aware.”

“Of course Myles managed to figure it out,” said Alex, sneering. His sneer faded as he took in the rest of what Roger had said. “Gary?”

“I believe she told him. They’ve kept things from you before,” he reminded him, not unkindly. “I told you about their trips to the Dancing Dove with Jon and Raoul.” He had once caught a glimpse of those, a fleeting memory, during a magic lesson with Prince Jonathan.

He watched Alex flex and point his toes in his soft boots, stretching out his calves and feet, as he stared moodily into the fire. As though he were, even now, readying himself for a duel. Roger took another sip of wine, feeling a warm glow of contentment spread through him. Finally, things were looking up.

“You met her in the marketplace?” asked Alex, puzzled by this.

“That’s right.” Roger smiled, remembering. The incident had occurred at a jeweler’s stall, near midday. He and Alanna had both reached for the same amethyst bracelet.

Alex had returned his attention to the hearth. The play of firelight over his face made his expression look more haunted than it might otherwise have done. “I’m the better wrestler, and maybe the better archer. But other than that . . .”

“You’re also a knight of the realm, and she won’t be. She’s gone home to Trebond in disgrace, where she’ll likely fall behind on her sword training. She won’t have anyone half as good as you to spar with.”

Alex rubbed the place where his neck met his shoulder, looking thoughtful. “Two hundred years ago there were lady knights throughout Tortall.”

“I don’t object to that. They won their shields honorably. What I took exception to was the deceit.”

“I see. _That’s_ what you took exception to.”

He ignored the sardonic undertone in Alex’s soft voice; nothing was going to spoil his mood tonight. It was true that she had tricked him — _him_ — but in the end, he had gotten the better of her. “Sore muscles? Take care not to overextend yourself.”

“It’s just a twinge.”

“My cousin is unhappy, of course,” said Roger, putting his hands on Alex’s shoulders. He began to knead the muscles there, working out the knots with motions as skilled and precise as when he polished and sharpened a sword he had made himself. He smiled when Alex sighed and closed his eyes, relaxing against the back of the chair. “I do feel sorry for him. They were very close.”

Alex opened his eyes again, frowning up at Roger. “Why do I suddenly get the feeling he’s going to do something stupid?”

The smile faded. “The thought had crossed my mind. You remember their little adventure in the Black City as well as I do. There’s a possibility that he might go after her, and try to convince her to return.”

“What do you want me to do? Stop him?”

Roger shook his head, smiling again. “Believe me, I know how difficult it can be to change Jon’s mind, when he gets an idea into his head. Try to persuade him to stay, if you can. If not — it may be best for you to accompany him on the road to Trebond.”

Alex turned to look at him, and Roger let his hands slide off his shoulders, to grip the back of the chair instead. “Why? Forgive me, Your Grace, but — ”

“You think this is a fool’s errand. I understand. So do I, but in this case I fear we’ll have to let Jon make his own mistakes, in order for him to learn. But we certainly don’t want him to come to harm on the road.” He smiled again. “There is no one I trust more than you to keep him safe along the Great Road North.”


	2. The Arrow and the Crown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to inlovewiththeworld and VelveteenHamlet for reading all of my weirdo dark AU fic and helping me wrestle it into shape. Some of the dialogue toward the end is from _First Test_.

**437 H.E.**

He rode hard for the castle once his head had cleared, with Jon slumped over the saddle in front of him. Alex couldn’t remember the blow that had knocked him out. He had swung his sword at one of the bandits, and then a moment later he’d awoken on the ground, with Jon lying white-faced beside him in the dirt. There was an arrow in Jon’s chest, an armor-piercing bodkin, and his horse was dead.

When Alex broke through a line of fir trees to come within sight of the castle walls, he saw Alan waiting for them near the gate, longbow in hand. Alan’s face went pale when he saw Jon, eyes widening. He dropped the bow and sprinted for them. Alex reined up hard to keep from running him down, his head spinning from the blood loss.

Alanna, he reminded himself when she reached them, her name was Alanna. But she didn’t look any different from usual. Her red hair was tied back out of her face; she wore breeches and boots. A red crystal pendant, the only strange thing about her, hung around her neck. She gripped it, as though for comfort, and his eyes were drawn to the front of her shirt. It had been flatter before, maybe.

She felt for Jon’s pulse, passed her hand over his mouth to feel his breath, and shook her head. “No, _no_ — help me get him down, I need to —”

The world went dark and off-kilter. Alex blinked rapidly, swaying in the saddle, and when he looked up again Alanna was staring at him. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. We need to get you both inside — can you stay up there any longer?”

He nodded. “I’m fine.”

She narrowed her strange eyes at him. “Fine? You’re going to lose that arm if I don’t do something quickly.”

He didn’t feel like arguing with her after that. He concentrated on staying upright in the saddle while she led his horse through the gate. When they were in the courtyard she helped him slide down to the ground, and steadied him when his knees buckled. He put his hand on Blade’s flank for balance while she lifted Jon down from the saddle.

Time skipped a beat again. All of a sudden Alanna’s manservant was there, cursing under his breath as he lifted the prince into his arms. Odd seeing that man here, instead of at the palace. Trying to recall his name, Alex watched him carry Jon inside. Then Alanna had her arm around him again and was helping him walk forward. His feet felt strangely heavy.

“My horse,” he tried to argue. “I need to tend to Blade —”

Alanna gave him a strange look, somewhere between a frown and a very sad smile. “I’d forgotten you named your horse that. Don’t worry, one of the hostlers will look after him.”

Alex nodded, too tired to do anything else. Moving his head made the pounding in it worse.

“Jon’s horse?” she asked, still looking sadly at him.

He stopped himself from trying to shake his head. “Dead.”

Then he was lying on a pallet in the kitchen, watching the fire dance in the hearth as she knelt over him, her hands on his chest. Coolness spread from her palms throughout his body, bringing relief with it. “Jon’s still alive,” said Alanna. “Coram went to get Maude — the village healer who first trained me. She’s going to help. I’ll take care of the worst of your hurts now, and then we’re going to save him.”

His sword arm went cold, numbing the pain. “There’s an arrow in your arm,” she said.

He grunted. He already knew that.

She brushed her hand over his forehead, and the coolness spread through his head. “Your brain’s badly bruised, but I don’t think there will be any lasting damage. And I think one of them must have kicked you in the chest while you were down, because you broke at least two ribs.”

Alex grimaced at the litany of his wounds. He could recall a moment on the road, just after the bandits had first appeared, when he had felt blissfully happy. He was always happy with a sword in his hand. But then arrows had started to rain down from the trees, and he’d realized how outnumbered they were.

“Bandits,” he managed to say. “About twenty of them.”

“Hush,” she said, putting her hand on his chest. He hissed at the sharp pain as his cracked ribs mended. From beside the hearth, her cat watched him with unblinking purple eyes. Alex stared at it, unable to look away, until darkness overcame him again.

He slept. When he woke again, he was horribly thirsty. Someone had removed his armor and his shirt, neatly stitched up the wound in his arm, and spread a heavy blanket over him. There was a pitcher of water and a cup beside him.

When he tried to sit up, Alanna was there again, pouring water into the cup for him. Her eyes were red, as though she had been crying. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been trampled by a horse,” he said, after gulping down the water. “How’s Jon?”

She looked down, avoiding his eyes, and he knew. “Twenty bandits?” she asked.

If he could do nothing else, he could still report on a battle; they’d beaten that training into him. “Give or take a few. They came in two waves — the second group was in the trees at first, and they came down after the first group had wounded us.”

She was toying nervously with the crystal pendant she wore. “Did Jon ask you to come with him?”

“I offered,” he admitted. “I tried to persuade him not to follow you. I said his father wouldn’t like it.”

“No,” she agreed through gritted teeth. “By the time I left Corus, King Roald and Duke Roger had already made their decision.”

Alex had known for years that Roger’s dislike for her was mutual, but the way she said his name still pricked at him. “It was the king’s decision.” Unconsciously, he moved his hand to his belt, reaching for the hilt of a sword he no longer wore. Where had she put it?

Her face was grim, and she gripped the red crystal like a child clinging to a doll. It flashed in the firelight, nearly as much as her eyes were flashing, making him feel drowsy. “Please tell me that it wasn’t Roger’s idea for you to accompany Jon here.”

“Of course not,” he snapped, trying to wake up again. “What’s wrong with you?”

As soon as it was out of his mouth, he realized what he had just said and felt sick. “Gods, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean — I’m so sorry.” For the first time he could remember, his voice was outrunning his thoughts. His brain felt as though she’d wrapped it in soft cotton.

It was too late. “What’s _wrong_ with me? You just killed my best friend, and now you’re asking me what’s _wrong?"_

Alex struggled to sit up, but his arm collapsed under him. “You think _I_ killed Jon? I tried to _save_ him.”

Her cat had remained beside the fire while he slept. It continued to stare at him, its tail swishing from side to side. Alex stared back, feeling his mind begin to clear. Why was he trying to get up? Why had he reached for his sword? He couldn’t recall.

“You were enchanted!”

What was she going on about? He lay back against the pillows, baffled. “Enchanted?”

“Just like those wolves. Demon Grey and his mate,” she insisted, when he looked blankly at her. “I saw orange fire around them when Demon Grey tried to kill me the winter before last, just as I saw it around you today. It’s faded now, but it was there a moment ago.”

“Orange,” he repeated, and then it dawned on him what she was talking about. “Oh no. No. He wouldn’t do that.”

“He’s the heir to the throne now.”

“He _wouldn’t_ enchant me,” said Alex, feeling sick again at the thought of it. “He wouldn’t use magic on me without asking first. He just wouldn’t.” Roger had once healed a nasty bruise he’d sustained during a jousting practice with Raoul, a month or two before his Ordeal. In his mind’s eye, Alex could see him again, examining the bruise with a slight wince and then asking, very gravely, whether Alex would permit him to heal it.

“No?” said Alanna, her face flushed with rage. “He didn’t interview you like the rest of us, when he first came to the palace? Did you have a headache afterward?”

He shook his head, wanting her to go away and let the room be silent and dark. “I didn’t kill Jon,” he repeated.

For a moment he thought Alanna was going to yell at him again, but then her shoulders slumped. “You’ll need to take his body back to Corus when you’re healed,” she said quietly. “You and Coram. I’ll ride with you into the city, but I don’t think I’d be welcome at the palace.”

He was still reeling from the sudden change in her mood. “It’s late in the year for traveling,” he said eventually. She wasn’t wrong — the king and queen would want Jon laid to rest in Corus — but there had been snow flurries along Trebond Way that morning. “We should leave tomorrow.”

“The day after,” she argued, “or else we’re going to have to tie you to your horse.”

“Do it, then.”

Her eyes blazed again, and for a moment he thought they were about to come to blows over this. Picturing it, Alex started to laugh. Her eyes widened again. He put his hands over his mouth, trying to smother the noise, ignoring the sharp pain in his wounded shoulder. It was monstrous, but he couldn’t stop laughing.

“You’re in shock,” she said, but her mouth twisted in disgust. “You need to get more sleep. I’ll make you some tea.”

She left him there, sitting on the pallet by the fire, laughing uncontrollably into his hands.

**438 H.E.**

It didn’t snow in Pearlmouth, but winters usually brought rain, and it was still winter for at least another few weeks. Rain lashed the shutters and drummed on the roof of the inn. Inside the common room, though, there was light and warmth, and a card game in full swing beside the blazing fire. Alan Bowman, formerly Alanna of Trebond, sat at a table in the far corner of the room, waiting for the bowl of soup she’d ordered and for her hair to dry. Occasionally the door to the street would open, admitting a gust of cold, wet air that made her shiver even through her padded gambeson and cloak. A peal of laughter rose up from the card game, and she took another sip of her wine.

“Next game,” said Coram, who sat across from her, “I think I’ll join in. We could use the money if I win.”

“And if you don’t?” She hadn’t meant for that to sound so sharp, but nowadays most of what she said had that tone. Frustration hummed just under her skin, as though she contained within her a cloud of wasps.

Coram shrugged, apparently unfazed. “There’s always tomorrow night, lad.”

“We should be moving on.” They had agreed that if the weather wasn’t too bad, they would leave early in the morning and push to reach the Tyran border before nightfall.

 _You should rest here another day,_ said Faithful, who lay curled on the bench beside her, dozing intermittently. _The horses would welcome a break, and so would I._

Alanna sighed and pushed some hair out of her eyes, thinking. In Port Caynn, she’d cropped her hair to her earlobes again, and dyed it dark with walnut juice. That had been months ago, but occasionally the color still startled her when she looked in the mirror, as though a stranger looked back at her.

Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to wait another day. It had been a struggle, traveling so far in winter, and she didn’t want to exhaust Moonlight just to move a little quicker down the unknown road that lay ahead of her.

“All right,” she said, feeling suddenly hollow. In moments like this, when the rage and grief left her all at once, she wondered why Coram still put up with her. What a thankless job looking after her and Thom had turned out to be. “We can stay here another night.”

The weather was against them, anyway. It continued to rain throughout the night and into the next day. She was relieved to hear the rain start to let up around suppertime; she didn’t think she could stand to laze around for much longer. She sat at her corner table again, her back to the wall, sipping wine in the dim lamplight and watching Coram laugh and joke as he played cards with strangers. Faithful was elsewhere, hunting mice in the shadows upstairs.

Had it been another game — an archery contest or even a wrestling match, something where she could move around — she might have joined in. She had entered a few archery contests on their long journey south, and even won them a silver purse once. But she couldn’t sit still for cards. She’d never excelled at sitting still, but now it was harder than it had ever been. She found talking harder now too, as though all her words were a hard knot buried deep in her chest.

Alanna sighed, and took another sip of wine. She wasn’t sure whether she liked the dry red wine Pearlmouth was famous for, but she liked the chicken soup the inn served, creamy and tart with a surprising amount of lemon juice, and the grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb that she’d felt daring enough to order that night. That night she felt ravenous, while at other times food still tasted colorless to her, like ashes, the way it had in the first few weeks after Jon’s death. It was strange, but she couldn’t remember feeling like that after her father had died. Perhaps grief was different every time.

The door to the street opened again, and two men entered the common room, lowering the hoods of their cloaks as they approached the bar. She watched closely, more out of habit than interest, as they motioned for the innkeeper’s wife. As she poured them each a cup of wine, they struck up a conversation with her, perhaps about the weather or the road into Pearlmouth.

Something about the way they moved had triggered the feeling of a half-forgotten memory for Alanna. Feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the rain, she lowered one hand to the dagger she wore on her belt. As Alan Bowman, a northern blacksmith’s son, she didn’t want to attract attention to herself by wearing a sword, but she still had her knives.

In answer to something the innkeeper’s wife had said, one of the men turned and looked right at her.

She met his gaze squarely, her mind running through a list of the inn’s exits. They must have come from the palace, she thought, as they moved toward her. Part of her had been waiting for this moment for months now. Then they came near enough that she recognized one of them.

“Lightfingers?” she said, astonished. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Smiling crookedly, he sat down at the table across from her. His friend joined him; she knew the man by sight from the Dancing Dove but couldn’t recall his name. “He said we was to track you down,” said Lightfingers, “and make sure you was safe.”

His rakish smile reminded her so much of George that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she croaked, “ _How_ did you find me?”

Lightfingers shrugged. “We caught the scent in Port Legann, and from there it was easy enough to track you southeast. Don’t you worry, though — we’re His Majesty’s best. That duke has no idea where you are.”

She felt one corner of her mouth twitch up into a rare smile. If there was a king she trusted now, it was George. “In that case, I guess I’ll let you stay. What are those?” she asked, for his companion had drawn a bundle of papers, tied together with twine, out from under his cloak. He passed them to her. They’d been sealed with plain wax.

“Letters from home, lad,” said Lightfingers brightly. “From George himself, of course, and from your brother and Sir Myles.”

Coram appeared at her side as she was untying the twine, his face like a stormcloud. “What’s this, lad?”

“It’s all right,” she said, breaking the seal on the first letter. “They’re George’s men. They came to bring us news from Corus.”

She watched Coram’s expression shift from suspicion to shock to some odd combination of relief and disapproval. He had never liked her friendship with George. “Long way to come,” he grunted at last.

“The weather wasn’t too bad, south of Corus,” said Lightfingers, as though making idle conversation.

Her jaw set, Alanna began to read the first letter, which turned out to be from Myles. The situation in Corus was grim, as she’d feared. At the time the letter was written, the queen had been gravely ill. Alanna bit her lip, recalling the black banners draped over the city walls as they had approached the gates of Port Legann, and the rumors at the inn there that the queen had died of influenza. At the time, being so far from Corus, she hadn’t known quite whether to trust them. But Queen Lianne hadn’t been well since the Sweating Sickness, not truly, and she wasn’t surprised to read that her health had declined sharply after losing Jon.

“The queen?” she asked, wanting to know for sure.

Lightfingers lowered his eyes. “Died back in November. I’m sorry, lad.”

Though she had braced herself for the first mention of Roger, Alanna still felt a hot, sick feeling sweep through her when she read that the duke had taken over most of King Roald’s administrative duties after Jon’s death. The king had evidently lost interest in such things; after the queen’s death, Alanna doubted it would return.

She wasn’t surprised to find that the next letter was from Thom. Though the seal on it was unmarked, the wax was Trebond red.

> _Dear Alanna,_
> 
> _Your friend the dishonorable George has assured me that this letter will reach you, and as none of us have any clear idea of where you’ve gone, I suppose I’ll have to trust him. Do write back if you can._
> 
> _I’ve come to Corus as you requested, but with Prince Jonathan dead my objective has necessarily changed. Don’t be too cross with me if you hear rumors of me trying to make nice with our smiling friend. I’d rather he didn’t consider me an enemy after he becomes king — which could happen any day now, frankly. The queen has taken to her bed with a fever, and I’m not certain if we’ll be seeing her again. His Majesty doesn’t look quite well either. There’s a great deal of uncertainty and tension in the air here, as though we’re all waiting for the storm to begin._
> 
> _Our friend has been very polite to me since I arrived, even going so far as to share some of his books of sorcery. Where he keeps the truly interesting ones hidden I’m not sure, but I intend to find out. I’ll try to let you know if I learn anything that may be to our advantage._
> 
> _Tension and uncertainty aside, I find that I enjoy the luxuries of palace life very much. After years of monastery life, I like to think that I’ve earned this. I hope that you’re well, wherever you are. Take care of yourself._
> 
> _I’ll keep a close eye on our smiling friend for both of us. I suggest you keep as far away from Corus as you can, at least for a while._
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Thom_

The idea of Thom making nice, as he’d put it, with Duke Roger made her grind her teeth. That was just how he wrote, she reminded herself. His letter detailing their father’s final illness had had that same dry, flippant tone.

Alanna opened the next letter, which was from George. She ought to have read it first, she realized. She was too upset now to focus on anything he’d written — that he missed her terribly and wished he could be there with her, but he couldn’t abandon his people; that he wanted her to keep safe, wherever she chose to go, and not worry about him; that he intended to make life difficult for Roger. It was all she could do not to crush the page in her fist.

She took a deep breath and folded his letter neatly, planning to reread it later when it would comfort her. “Thank you,” she made herself say to Lightfingers and his friend.

“We can return in the morning,” said the second man, whose name she’d forgotten. “If you want to answer any of them.”

“I’d appreciate that. Not too late, though — we were planning on leaving early.”

“It’s good to see you, lad,” said Lightfingers, smiling sincerely at her, before he got up from the table.

Coram waited until they’d left the common room. “What did they write?”

She handed him the letter from Thom first, gritting her teeth again as he read it. “That fool brother of yers is playing with fire,” he said. “Last I checked, the duke wanted him as dead as ye.”

“I suppose he thinks he can convince Roger otherwise. But try telling _him_ he’s making a mistake.”

She gazed around the room, which felt smaller and more cramped than it ever had before. Then, surprising herself, she began to smile. The inn stood just a short ride away from the city gates. If they made good time tomorrow, they could reach the border within hours, well before dark. It would only be the second time she’d left Tortall. She was looking forward to moving on.

**452 H.E.**

Kel watched her new sponsor walk away, her feet planted and her arms crossed over her chest. After a moment, Nealan seemed to realize that she wasn’t following, and turned back. Sighing, he beckoned to her, but she held her ground.

“What part of ‘come on’ was unclear?” he asked.

She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes as he stomped back over to her. “What do you care if I only last a week? Queenscove is a ducal house. Mindelan’s just a barony, and a new one at that. Nobody cares about Mindelan. We aren’t related, and our fathers aren’t friends. So who am I to you?”

He stared at her. “Direct little thing, aren’t you?”

Kel had always been comfortable with waiting. She could wait for hours if she had to. But the silence seemed to prick at him, until he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Look — you heard me say I’ve lived at court almost all my life, right?”

She nodded, curious as to where he was going with this.

“You meet a lot of interesting people, living at court — people from all over the world. If you’re paying attention, you figure out that everybody has their own way of doing things. Take the Shangs, for example. We have two Shang warriors at the palace right now, helping to train pages, and one of them is a woman. If our fellow pages were paying more attention, they might have noticed women can fight. I figure, if that’s the life you want, you ought to have the same chance to get it as anyone else here. Besides —”

He stopped abruptly, and then shook his head, smiling ruefully. “I keep forgetting I’m not arguing over some arcane text in the City of the Gods. Sorry about the speech. Now can we go? If we’re late to banquet service, Master Oakbridge will have us skinned.”

“You studied in the City of the Gods?” she asked, as they started down the corridor together. 

She had to trot to keep up with him, his legs were so long. Her brother Avinar was currently studying in the City of the Gods; Nealan might very well have known him.

He nodded, his expressive face suddenly closed-off. “For a few years. I came back to court in the spring, as soon as the roads were clear, to try my hand at page training.”

It didn’t make any sense to her that he would change his mind like that, after years of study and hard work. But perhaps he was like Avinar, who jumped from one grand idea to the next with scarcely a breath in between.

“Note that stairwell,” he said, pointing. “Don’t let anyone tell you it’s a shortcut to the mess hall or the classrooms. It goes straight down and ends on the lower levels, underground.”

“Yessir.” She thought she could feel a subterranean chill emanating from the stairwell.

“Don’t call me sir.”

“Yessir,” she replied.

He stopped. “Was that meant to be funny?”

“Nossir.”

He threw up his hands, shaking his head. She had been happy to stop and catch her breath, but already he was off again. At least their quick pace kept off some of the damp chill in the air. Used to the polished wood floors, straw mats, and paper walls of the Yamani emperor’s palace, she found the Tortallan palace drafty and gloomy; the cool stone seemed almost to press in on her. Mindelan was made of stone, too, but at least it echoed with the laughter of her nieces and nephews.

“Now, as I said,” Nealan went on, “we’re reporting to Oakbridge, royal master of ceremonies and our teacher in etiquette. Breakfast and lunch we eat in the mess like real people, but at night we serve in the banquet hall. We’re the lucky ones, though — as first years we just have to stand outside the kitchen and hand dishes to the older pages. They’re the ones who have to worry about tripping in front of the king. After that we eat a late supper and try to get some studying in before we pass out on top of our books.”

Kel nodded. She’d heard the same instructions from her brother Anders. “Nealan?”

“It’s Neal. My least favorite aunt calls me Nealan.”

“I got the sense you were going to say something else, at the end of your speech.”

He stopped again, glancing around nervously. The corridor was empty, but that didn’t seem to reassure him. From further down they could hear the distant clatter of pans in the kitchen. “Remind me again later,” he said finally, “and I’ll tell you what it was. In the mess, maybe.”

Master Oakbridge was a thin, tense man who frowned deeply when he saw Kel. He put her into a line of first year pages at the top of the stairs leading up from the kitchen, in front of Neal. At first, Kel thought he was making a mistake with this, when she discovered that the boy in front of her wouldn’t take the bowl of soup that Neal had just passed to her.

Oakbridge swooped down on him. “Why are you holding up the line, page?”

The other page took the bowl, glaring fiercely at Kel.

Oakbridge’s sharp eye kept the dishes moving down the line to the senior pages without incident. At the same time, his vigilance wouldn’t allow Kel to relax even for an instant. Her stomach began to growl after the nobles’ first course, lunch a distant memory.

Finally they were released from duty, after the king and queen had led their court into the ballroom and the squires had come out to wait on them. As she followed Neal to the mess hall, Kel muttered to him, “I don’t think I’d want to dance after a meal like that. They do this every night?”

He smiled. “Just about. Some nights there are other entertainments — Players, or illusionists, that kind of thing. Musicians, at the very least.”

She shook her head. Just the thought of that sounded exhausting.

The mess hall was full of quiet chatter as they entered. Neal led her to a table piled with trays, plates, cutlery, and napkins at one end, with dishes of food along the length of it. Kel copied him, taking a bowl of leek soup and loading her plate with thick slices of ham, roast parsnips and carrots, and a couple of rolls.

The chatter faded as they looked around for a table. Kel kept her eyes on her tray, trying to ignore the whispers and stares as she fought to keep her face blank and her heart stone. When she followed Neal to the end of a table, the nearest boys moved down, leaving two empty seats between them and Neal, and three between them and Kel.

“This is nice,” said Neal cheerfully, as he spread his food out over the empty space. “Usually it’s impossible to get a bit of elbow room in here.”

She decided to wait until after Lord Wyldon had given his prayers. “Don’t let his talk of uncertain times bother you,” said Neal, as they sat down again. “He’s been whining since the immortals came back. The Stump really doesn’t like change.”

“The what?”

Neal grinned. “I call him the Stump, because he’s so stiff.”

Though he wasn’t wrong, you couldn’t have called that respectful. On the other hand, she didn’t think it would be respectful of her to scold her sponsor, so she held her tongue. “You were going to say something else earlier,” she reminded him. “At the end of your speech in the hallway.”

He set down his fork and glanced around, but the other pages were making a show of ignoring them now. “Probably no listening spells here,” he remarked in an undertone. “Well — there might be, but I’ll chance it. I love chancing things. Keeps life interesting.”

Kel raised her eyebrows. “Listening spells?”

His eyebrows rose as well. “My dear girl, our king is a very famous sorcerer. There are listening spells all over this stone heap. I have a feeling they might be triggered by names, so I’m not going to say any, and I invite you to do the same. I was just going to say earlier, there _was_ another girl who tried for her knighthood here, about fifteen years ago. During the reign of our present king’s uncle. You’ve heard the story?”

Wincing slightly, she nodded.

“I should probably ask _what_ you’ve heard,” he said, seeing her expression. “That she murdered the last crown prince in cold blood, I suppose.”

That was more or less what her brother Conal had told her, though he’d added in some moralizing about the proper place of women as well. “Are you saying you don’t believe that?”

“Certainly not. More importantly, my father doesn’t believe it, and he knew her. They served alongside each other in the Tusaine War,” he explained, seemingly encouraged when Kel lowered her fork slowly and stared at him. “He’s the chief of the realm’s healers, you see — during the war he presided over the healers’ tents, and she was a gifted healer as well as a warrior. She helped nurse the soldiers when she wasn’t fighting. My father always spoke well of her. He also told me she was the one who saved the prince when he nearly died from Sweating Sickness, back when she was only a page.”

None of this had been part of Conal’s narrative, only deception, sorcery, and betrayal. “Where did it come from, then, the idea that she killed the prince?”

“Well, she’d made enemies over the years — that was part of it. But what it came down to was that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the prince was attacked by bandits on his travels. Not close enough to save him with her magic in time, but close enough to be implicated in the rumors. But my father doesn’t believe those, and neither do I.”

Kel sat back, thinking this over. It was a weight off her mind, knowing that at least two people here thought the last girl to wear a page’s uniform might have been a hero — or at least, not a villain. “Do you think they should have let her take the Ordeal?" she asked. "Even after lying about who she was?”

Neal was making short work of the small mountain of bread rolls on his plate. “After getting through all that training _and_ a war? Of course. The last king wouldn’t have allowed it, though. It was a matter of pride for him, and besides, my father says he hated progress almost as much as the Stump does.”

She smiled, feeling relieved. “What about the present king?” It wasn’t fair that King Roger had allowed her to be put on probation; it wasn’t fair at all, but at least she was here. She still wasn’t entirely sure why he had written the law allowing girls to become pages. When her father had told her about it, he’d said something about it being a return to tradition, to the days of yore when women had fought for the crown as a matter of course. But clearly that idea hadn’t sat well with Lord Wyldon, a staunch traditionalist, so it didn’t make much sense to her. And after all, why change the law now?

“He’s more comfortable with progress,” Neal replied. “He and the Stump seem to clash over that sometimes. My father says that Wyldon nearly dropped dead the day King Roger decreed that he wanted the Gifted pages taught by a series of teachers instead of just one, to teach us a wider variety of magic.”

“How does that work exactly?”

“We switch teachers every month. It’s a bit of a mess, actually; I’m not sure the king really thought through all the practical aspects of it.” Neal gazed up at Lord Wyldon on the dais, looking thoughtful. “If you ask me, the Stump doesn’t like His Majesty at all. He’d never admit it, but there are signs. He adores the queen, though. The Stump, you see, has very specific ideas about what a lady should be like.”

Kel had certainly gotten that impression from her meeting with Lord Wyldon. She glanced over at the crown prince, who was sitting two tables away, chatting with some other fourth year pages and the boy he’d chosen to sponsor — quiet, brown-haired Jasson of Eldorne. “What do you think of him?” she asked, nodding toward the prince. He was a lanky, dark-haired boy, good-looking and apparently charming, judging by the way the other boys at his table focused their attention fully on him. Even without being able to hear what he was saying, she found herself glancing at him periodically, as though her eye were drawn to him by some magical force.

Neal shrugged. “Jon’s all right, but we’re not really close. He has his own circle of friends, and now I have mine.” He bowed to her, rather awkwardly, for he was sitting down.

“You can’t just mean me.” Had he made himself an outcast, by choosing to sponsor her? But then he was much older than their year-mates, so perhaps he hadn’t been close with any of the other pages to begin with.

“We iconoclasts must stick together,” he proclaimed, before attacking one of the rolls on his plate with gusto.

“Icono-what?”

“An iconoclast is a person who attacks traditional institutions and belief systems,” he explained, in between bites. She frowned at him slightly, but Neal didn’t seem to be judging her for not knowing the word, only glad to be sharing his knowledge with her. “Originally the word just referred to someone who attacks religious icons and imagery — you can see the root word ‘icon’ in it.”

“I’m not an iconoclast,” she said.

“No? You’re attacking the belief that only men can be knights, which has held for over a century now, more or less. And I’m attacking the Stump, who is a traditional institution all by himself. We’re rebels, you and I.”

Kel tried and failed to hide a smile. Amidst the gloom of the unfamiliar castle, the hostility of her training master and fellow pages, and her homesickness for the Yamani Islands, at least she’d found one person who was unequivocally on her side. “Aren’t you going to finish your vegetables?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I’m saving room for dessert.”


	3. In the Temple of the Goddess

**439 H.E.**

Alanna lit a candle, murmuring one of the oldest prayers she knew as she waited for her nose to itch. Nothing happened. No uncanny prickle over her skin, no sneezing. After a few minutes she sighed and began to look around.

The Temple of the Great Mother Goddess in Whitehall, a small city in the northwest of Maren, was clean and well-kept. The floors were of milky polished stone that was obviously swept at least once a day; the altar bore fresh flowers and an array of pristine, identical white candles for worshipers to light in prayer. A clean breeze blew through the temple, carrying with it the green smell of early spring, of damp earth and growing things. It was a pleasant smell, but it lacked the wild mystery of the rainy forest in which she’d first met the Goddess face to face. Yet for some reason, still unknown to her, she’d caught a glimpse of the temple in the fire, at the inn where they’d stayed in Berat, the capital city.

She sighed again as she turned away from the altar, thinking of the journey northeast out of Tyra, where they’d spent the better part of the past year. Sir Myles had suggested that they visit one of his merchant friends who lived there; when they reached the city, it turned out that the man was in need of a weapons instructor for his two sons. They had lodged with him during their stay, while Coram found work at a local forge and Alanna taught fencing and archery to two small, somber boys who referred to her as “the lady.” She had liked it there, but after six months their stationary life had begun to itch at her.

As they made their way east into Maren and then north toward Berat, they had passed through miles of farmland: vast farms worked by teams of enslaved people, and smaller communes now owned by refugees from Sarain. What she’d seen still troubled her, for different reasons.

There had been no slavery in Tortall for nearly two hundred years, and Tortallans prided themselves on that. But in Maren, slavery was just another part of the fabric of life, though the harsh reality of it was largely contained to those large farms — large farms that fed the people in Berat and, she had begun to realize, the people in surrounding countries. She knew that Tortall imported much of its grain, olive oil, and spices from Maren; other spices they imported from the Copper Isles, another slaveholding country. Other goods came from Carthak. For years, she had been eating food that had been harvested by slaves, without ever thinking about it.

And then there were the refugees. In Tortall and Tyra, she’d heard little mention of the worsening political situation in Sarain, which had developed into civil war around the same time she’d left the palace and Jon had been killed. In her history classes, she’d learned a brief overview of Sarain’s history and culture, as well as an outline of the ruling families and the broader circumstances leading up to the burgeoning war. She had learned more by talking with innkeepers and merchants in Maren. But actually seeing the refugees who had settled there brought home how little of the world she knew.

As she left the temple, she considered where next to go. She wasn’t far from the marketplace near the western gates of the city; she could stop there on her way back to the inn. And when they left the inn? Galla was their most likely destination. It was a big country, with plenty of cities to explore. She didn’t want to travel east into a civil war, and she was wary of visiting Tusaine again.

Lost in thought, she nearly stumbled into an older woman heading into the temple. “Oh, excuse me, mistress,” said Alanna, dodging her.

The other woman had stepped out of her way with a warrior’s grace. She wore her tight, graying curls cropped close to her head, and she dressed like a Marenite man, in breeches under an embroidered jacket that hung almost to her knees. Unlike most Marenite men, she wore no weapons, not even a belt knife.

Alanna’s curiosity seemed to be mutual: the other woman watched her with amused interest. “You move like a fighter, lass.” Her accent surprised Alanna almost as much as her appearance. At first she thought it was a Tortallan Hill Country accent, but it was tinged with something she couldn’t place. Was it the result of travel, or did she have a Tusaine accent?

“So do you,” said Alanna, embarrassed to be caught out. Not wanting to seem out of place in a Goddess temple, she’d worn the only dress she had brought with her, and a veil to hide her cropped hair. Her skirts were too narrow and the colors not bright enough for Maren, but she hadn’t attracted much attention, until now.

“So I do. Not from Whitehall, are you?”

“No,” agreed Alanna, “we’re both a long way from home, aren’t we?” The other woman’s vowels weren’t quite right for Tusaine. What was a Tortallan hillwoman doing in Whitehall?

The other woman smiled, showing strong white teeth like a wolf’s. “We certainly are. Tell me, mistress, where are you bound?”

“The marketplace,” said Alanna, still wary of her.

“Splendid,” she said, following her. “There’s a coffeehouse nearby — have you had coffee? It’s a new drink from Carthak. Bitter, but very energizing.”

“Weren’t you going to pay your respects to the Goddess?”

“Oh, there’s time for that later. I’m interested in hearing news from home, and I have the sense you’d like to hear my story as well. From the sound of it, you’ve left Tortall recently.” The older woman looked appraisingly at her clothes. “A merchant’s wife or daughter, if I had to guess. I’d certainly trust you to guard my caravan. What do they call you?”

Alanna raised an eyebrow, amused by the woman’s vision of her. “Eleni,” she replied, borrowing George’s mother’s name off the top of her head. “And what do they call you?”

“A number of things, but I prefer Eda. Well, Mistress Eleni, was any part of that the truth?”

“Some of it,” said Alanna, following her into the western marketplace. It was smaller than the one in Berat, but seemed to have more goods from Galla available for sale. She’d return and look more closely at them later; for now, she kept her eyes on her new friend. “Where’s this coffeehouse?”

Coffee was worse than she’d imagined. Eda laughed at the face she made when she took her first sip. “It’s an acquired taste.”

“I’ll stick with tea, thanks,” Alanna croaked. The Bazhir tribes in southern Tortall brewed a mint tea she’d first tried on her visit to Persopolis as a page. They’d served it in Pearlmouth as well, a welcome taste from her childhood. As far as hot drinks went, she’d much rather have that.

“To be honest, I prefer tea, too,” said Eda. “In southern Tortall, they make a tea from hibiscus flowers — have you ever tried it? I grew up drinking it.”

Alanna shook her head. “Where did you grow up, exactly?”

“I was born just south of Fief Malven,” she said matter-of-factly, “but I grew up in northern Maren. I left Tortall when I was seven.” She took another sip of her coffee, without any apparent discomfort.

“Why?” asked Alanna, feeling an odd prickle of recognition. Who left home at such a young age, to live in northern Maren? “You’re a Shang warrior,” she said, almost accusingly. She remembered hearing that the Shang school was said to be hidden somewhere in northern Maren, though no one outside the order knew where. It certainly explained why Eda moved like a warrior but carried no weapons.

Eda inclined her head slightly, smiling.

Alanna leaned toward her, delighted, her coffee forgotten entirely. “Are you in Maren on assignment, or just passing through? What’s your Shang name?”

“So many questions! Clearly you grew up hearing the stories. They call me the Wildcat, and I’m bound for Sarain.”

That startled her. “Who are you going to fight for in Sarain?”

The Wildcat took another sip of her coffee. “The people, if I can. I’d like to help more refugees make it out of the country safely. No, I wouldn’t back either _jin_ Wilima or _zhir_ Anduo, and neither of them have asked me to anyway. Do you know much about the war in Sarain?”

“A little,” said Alanna, interested in hearing more of what Eda thought about it.

“The inciting incident happened last spring, when _zhir_ Anduo tried to overthrow _jin_ Wilima and failed, but that was just a spark. The kindling was centuries of hatred between the K’miri tribes and the lowlanders, who hold more power in Sarain. With conflicts like this one, there’s always kindling.”

There was kindling of this sort in Tortall, thought Alanna, thinking of the years of fighting between the army and the Bazhir tribes. With the right spark, that could lead to civil war. She knew how her countrymen felt about the Bazhir; though she didn’t share their prejudices, she was aware she didn’t really understand the Bazhir, the history or their customs. And didn’t she have her own prejudices? She’d grown up hearing that hillmen were savages, but Eda didn't seem like a savage to her.

“What about you?” asked Eda, sounding quite innocent. “Where’s your caravan bound?”

She knew that Alanna wasn’t a merchant. Perhaps she hadn’t guessed the whole truth — perhaps the news of Alanna’s discovery and exile from Corus hadn’t reached Maren yet — but she knew that there was more to her than Alanna had let on.

“Truth be told,” said Alanna, picking up her coffee cup again to steady her hands, “I’m not with a caravan. My home was destroyed, so my father and I are traveling in search of work.” It was a story she and Coram had already agreed upon, one not far from the truth. He’d raised her better than her own father, after all, and with Jon’s death her sense of security had been shattered as surely as an earthquake or flood would have done. And natural disasters were common enough that nobody would question their story.

“I’m sorry to hear that. The two of you are traveling alone?”

She nodded. “Usually I pass myself off as a boy, but I thought that would attract more attention in the Temple of the Goddess.”

“What sort of work are you looking for?”

“My father’s a blacksmith. I know some of his trade, and I’m a fair hand with a longbow.”

Eda didn’t look surprised by that. “Any other weapons?”

“I can fight with knives and a staff,” she replied. Her prowess with a sword would raise too many questions, now that she was no longer among Sir Myles’s friends. “I’m not a bad wrestler, either, though it’s not my strong suit.”

“Your parents never thought of giving you to Shang?”

Alanna bit her lip, remembering how she’d begged for Shang training as a child. But young noblewomen were never sent to join their order, and Trebond was one of the oldest families in Tortall. “No. I don’t know why.”

“Hm,” said Eda, looking thoughtful. She took another sip of her coffee.

“I’d be honored to watch you fight sometime. I’ve never seen Shang combat before.”

Eda set down her cup. “Why not? Don’t worry, lass, I’ll go easy on you.”

Alanna stared at her. She kept up with her training, but it had been over a month since she’d sparred with anyone besides Coram. “Really?” she breathed.

“Of course. It’s a gift, finding someone new to train with, and it’s not every day I meet another woman who can fight. Where are you staying?”

She named the inn where she and Coram had rented rooms.

“I’ll come by tomorrow morning, then. Let’s say an hour after dawn. What’s your preferred weapon?”

“Knives,” said Alanna, wishing she could openly use a sword. Maybe, if this went well, she could tell Eda the truth about herself someday. She’d love to fight a Shang warrior with the weapon she knew best.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” said the Wildcat, getting up from the table. She dropped a few coins beside her empty cup, enough to pay for both her drink and Alanna’s, and walked away, whistling softly to herself.

Alanna watched her go, shaking her head slightly in amazement. Was this why she’d been called to visit the temple? She couldn’t think of another explanation.

She took another sip of her coffee, wincing slightly. “If you’re listening,” she murmured to the Goddess, “thank you.”

Delia wasn’t sure whether she could take another month of this. The healers had recommended bed rest and a regimen of bitter willowbark teas, due to something involving swollen ankles and too much pressure on the walls of her blood vessels. She hadn’t been paying much attention, but unfortunately Roger had.

“Women get swollen ankles all the time when they’re with child!” she snapped at him, angered by the news from the healers and by her aching lower back. “It’s _normal.”_

He stood at her bedside, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stave off a headache. “Delia, please. I am trying to run a kingdom; I cannot abide your wailing right now. A transition of power is always difficult — ”

“You’ve been king for over a year now,” she pointed out, annoyed by his lofty tone. “Longer, actually, if you count the time between Lianne’s death and Roald’s.”

He shut his eyes. “To return to the subject of your health — I am not asking you to listen, for once, when someone is talking intelligently to you. So I’m not going to bring the healers back in here to explain that again. I am merely asking you to obey _me._ Go play cards or something with your ladies when they get here. Quietly. Let them distract you, please.”

“I’ve _been_ letting them distract me for weeks now,” she replied, trying to keep her voice from getting too loud. A lady never yelled, they had taught her at the convent. “I’m sick of cards, and music, and being quietly read to. I’m so bored in here I could scream.”

He brushed his knuckles, gently, over her cheek. “For my sake, please. And little Jonathan’s.”

That startled her out of her anger and frustration. “Jonathan?” she said, puzzled, before realizing what he meant. “Oh! I know we said we wouldn’t discuss baby names just yet, for fear of bad luck, but we could talk about it now.” She flushed slightly, remembering some of her daydreams on the subject. “Actually, I thought we might name him after my father.”

He chuckled. “Oh, Delia.” Then his expression turned thoughtful. “Well, perhaps as a third or fourth middle name.”

She gripped her blankets hard, an unsatisfying substitute for his throat. She was too slow right now; he’d dodge her easily if she launched herself at him.

He clucked his tongue soothingly. “I’m only trying to protect you.”

“You’ve been treating me like a porcelain vase,” she said through gritted teeth.

He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, but you are, and right now you contain something very important. Have you heard about what’s happening in Sarain right now? No, of course you haven’t. Well, they’re in the midst of a civil war, and if I died tomorrow, the same thing would happen here.”

“I don’t see why. You’re _going_ to have an heir, it’s practically inevitable right now. I wish we could just get it over with so I could move around again.”

“Delia,” he said dryly, “with a newborn on the throne and you the queen regent, I’m afraid we would all be doomed.”

He left her there in her bed, fuming. When she closed her eyes at night, she saw playing cards there in the darkness; she heard Lady Adaline playing something soothing on the harp. As for books, she was profoundly sick of her friends’ taste, and even sicker of her own taste.

There was a small library very close to her palace suite, a round sunny room with little white tables where she liked to sit quietly sometimes, reading poetry and drinking tea. She couldn’t move very fast right now, but Roger had made the mistake of leaving her alone. If she hurried, she might be able to get to the library before her ladies spotted her and dragged her back to her room. If only she could have a little time to herself in there, she might be able to find something that interested her, something different.

She struggled to her feet, hating the way that everything below her knees hurt. Not that everything above her knees felt much better, she thought grimly, as she pulled on her slippers and dressing gown. She didn’t recognize her own body anymore. But it was still cold enough, this early in the spring, that she could wear a heavy surcoat over her dressing gown, which helped disguise the fact that she wasn’t properly dressed.

Roger could take his opinion of her intelligence and shove it right down his throat. She hoped that he choked on it. For his information, she’d received a very good education from the convent school in the City of the Gods. Perhaps it hadn’t been equal to _his_ education — she hadn’t studied fencing or law, after all, and her own Gift wasn’t good for much besides lighting candles — but he didn’t have to treat her like an ornament.

Lost in thought, she nearly walked into the library before realizing it was occupied. She stopped short just in time. There was someone in there, and he was talking about her.

“— only married her because she was nearby and holding still,” drawled the voice, and her eyes narrowed. She recognized that voice.

“What do you care?” asked another man. “Plenty of noblewomen are pretty idiots. Plenty of _queens_ are pretty idiots. It isn’t really their job to be anything different. Now, where are those books you mentioned?”

Delia drew back against the wall, trying to place the second voice. She had heard it recently, she thought. Whoever it belonged to, he sounded as arrogant and careless as the first speaker, which didn’t help her narrow things down much. Your average nobleman sounded like that.

“Over here, I think. Why shouldn’t I care? She’s got the ear of His Majesty now. As soon as she’s recovered, she’ll probably spend half of what’s in the treasury on ball gowns.”

“You make pregnancy sound like a deadly illness,” remarked the second voice, amused.

“Isn’t it?”

“Besides, you’re assuming he listens to her. I’d say he’s far more likely to listen to you, or even to me. What, _these?_ Tirragen, I’ve already read these a hundred times.”

“What do I know about books of magic?” drawled Alexander of Tirragen. “I’ve seen His Majesty consult them occasionally, that’s all. I thought you might be interested.”

Thom of Trebond, she thought, realizing whom he was talking to. “I’d nearly forgotten you were just a sword thug,” said Lord Trebond. “Why did you lure me in here, then?”

“I thought we might be able to talk privately. There’s something I’ve been wondering.”

“Privately? We’re just down the hall from Her Majesty’s suite.”

Alex snorted. “How often do you think Roger visits her these days? Listen, have you had any contact with your sister lately?”

There was a pause. Feeling the tension in the air, Delia took another step back. Behind her and to the left was a corridor that led to the royal menagerie. If she needed to, she could duck into it and, with any luck, escape their notice.

“What, do you think I’ve been meeting her in secret?” asked Lord Trebond, sounding even more disgusted than usual.

“I thought you might have, I don’t know, seen an image of her in the fire or something. Sent your spirit to some foreign land to converse with her. I don’t know what wizards get up to these days.”

“Ask your precious Roger what they get up to, then. He’ll tell you that having the Gift shields you from scrying spells. My sister is Gifted, Tirragen; I can’t spy on her.”

“That’s a shame. You two probably miss each other. I’m sure that if _I_ had siblings — ”

“Is that all, then?”

“If the books don’t interest you.”

“They don’t,” said Lord Trebond, and then Delia heard his footsteps on the stone flags. She ducked into the corridor, trying to conceal herself behind a tapestry, trying to breathe quietly.

She listened to his footsteps retreating down the adjacent corridor, and then Alex’s. They had both gone the other way, without passing by her hiding place at all. She inhaled deeply, relieved, and then began to giggle. The laughter died almost as soon as it had begun, as the reality of her situation set in.

She was a queen hiding behind a tapestry, twenty years old and so heavy with child she could hardly walk. What a ridiculous picture she made. The Daughters of the Goddess had made it clear that her first duty as a noblewoman was to give her husband an heir, but as far as she was concerned, they hadn’t devoted nearly enough time to explaining how unpleasant the whole matter of pregnancy was.

They might have spent more time on matters of governance as well, she thought with a frown. She was used to bickering with Roger now, and Lord Trebond was contemptuous of everyone at court, but hearing Alex’s opinion of her had stung. Fief Tirragen bordered on Eldorne, so they had been friends as children — but when she’d been presented at court four years ago, he was cold to her. Since then, she had grown to believe he disliked her, though she didn’t know why. It bothered her. She wasn’t used to men disliking her, and she couldn’t guess what she’d done to upset him.

As she made her way back to her rooms, she wondered who else at court thought she was an idiot, who else disliked her. She had always tried to please everyone, though some of the other noblewomen had an unfortunate tendency to be jealous of her. If they knew what being married to Roger was like, they wouldn’t be jealous any longer.

There would be more children, of course. Obnoxious though he was, Roger wasn’t wrong about civil war. Even before Prince Jonathan’s death, there hadn’t been nearly enough heirs to the throne; she remembered hearing panicked rumors about the plague in Corus all those years ago, as far away as the City of the Gods. If the king and queen fell ill, her schoolmates had whispered, if the crown prince died, there would be only a single duke standing between peace and years of warring third cousins.

 _And now you,_ she thought, turning her attention on the child inside of her. _Whoever you are, whatever we end up calling you._ The responsibility that lay ahead of her seemed to solidify, more real now than it had ever felt before. She let herself into her rooms, unnoticed, and lay down on the bed again, taking up her embroidery to pass the time.

Who did she want her child to grow up and become? The midwife had said she was carrying a boy, but midwives were wrong every once in a while. Still, she was most likely carrying the next king of Tortall. What should a king be like? She lay back, thinking seriously for the first time about what qualities she wanted her son to have. The baby kicked her innards sharply for her trouble.

“Rude,” she murmured. She’d narrowly avoided pricking herself with her embroidery needle. “I see you’re threatening to take after your father.”

There was the danger, of course, that Roger would take an interest in raising his son. She’d have to be careful not to let him turn the child against her. Thom of Trebond was right: her husband rarely listened to her. He’d rather consult his advisors, especially his loyal swordsman and his pet mage. Sometimes she found it profoundly irritating, how little he cared about what she thought; at other times, she thought there was value in being ignored by him.

Her children wouldn’t ignore her. She’d make certain of that. Delia loved her own father, in a distant sort of way, but her real loyalty lay with her mother. As far as she was concerned, that was the natural way of things. There was power in motherhood — if the Daughters of the Goddess had taught her nothing else, they had taught her that — and there was even more power in being the mother of a future king. She began to hum quietly to herself, smiling, as the needle darted over and over through the silk.

**448 H.E.**

Roger’s spymaster had always reminded him faintly of a weasel. The man in question, Baron Yves of Sandhill, had reported to Roger’s ducal apartment at the agreed upon time, with a sheaf of papers and an unctuous smile. He was a pale, nondescript little man, with graying brown hair and a pointed face.

“Report,” said Roger, already tired of the other man’s presence. They sat close beside the fire in his sitting room, trying to keep off the chill of the early spring night.

Roger had kept his ducal apartment after his coronation, primarily because it would have been far more trouble than it was worth to move the contents of his mage’s workroom. There were things in it that he didn’t want anyone else to see. Besides, he was used to the apartment; he liked the comforts he’d accumulated there over the years.

Yves cleared his throat. “We’ve managed to place a new agent in the Yamani court, which has traditionally been rather difficult, and just this week I received my first report from her. Apparently the treaty negotiations are going well.”

Raising an eyebrow, Roger leaned forward. “Are they indeed?”

“Our new ambassador is enjoying more success than his predecessor. The Yamanis may soon be buying the majority of their grain and cotton from Tortall. Of course, nothing is set in stone yet,” he added, trying to keep the king from getting his hopes up prematurely.

Roger sat back in his chair, thoughtful. Evidently he’d been right to listen to his advisors and appoint Piers of Mindelan to the position. “What is this ambassador doing differently?”

Baron Yves frowned, slightly uncomfortable. “From what my agent reports, sire, the success is actually due to the ambassador’s lady. There was an attack on the imperial palace last year, you see, and she prevented some sacred artifacts from falling into the hands of the Scanran raiders.”

“How interesting. Tell me more. What artifacts?”

“A collection of golden swords dedicated to the patron goddess of the Yamani Islands, housed in the imperial temple.”

Roger raised his eyebrows. “How does a Tortallan noblewoman even come into contact with those, before the emperor takes notice of her family? I’m afraid you’ll have to go into more detail, Yves.”

The baron hadn’t really wanted to elaborate, Roger knew, but he went on dutifully, “It’s my understanding that one of the ambassador’s daughters was inside the temple at the time of the attack, viewing the swords with a lady-in-waiting. Lady Ilane came to retrieve her daughter when the raiders reached the temple. My agent tells me that she held them off until the palace guardsmen arrived.”

He hadn’t believed the story when he’d heard it. Roger could feel the incredulity rising from him like heat from a paving stone. “With what, the golden swords?”

Yves shook his head. “No, sire, with a Yamani polearm. The noblewomen train with them there.”

“Really,” murmured Roger, trying to imagine his own wife learning to fight with a halberd or a pole-axe. The thought was ridiculous.

But then an image rose, unbidden, of young Lady Alanna in her page’s guise, swinging a sword. Of course, she hadn’t been the first Tortallan girl to train for her knighthood, only the first one in about a hundred years. And evidently the practice hadn’t died out everywhere. After all, the Shangs still trained girls, and he recalled hearing tales of warrior women guarding the Saren warlords to the east. Perhaps Lady Alanna had just been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gods knew he would have welcomed her having been born in a different era from him.

“All Yamani noblewomen learn to use these polearms?” he asked, still trying to imagine it.

“So I’m told, sire. Even the ambassadors’ daughters are training with them now.”

Roger shook his head slowly, remembering the Mindelan family. He had met Baron Piers’s wife and younger children just before they’d set sail nearly six years ago. The older boys, he recalled, were already knights, or in the midst of their training. An absurd number of children for a minor nobleman, really. If they’d had any more, they might have had trouble feeding them all.

He couldn’t recall any of the children with much clarity, but he remembered Lady Ilane. A tall, striking woman, she had watched him appraisingly while he’d spoken with her husband, wishing the baron safe travels and good fortune with the emperor. Hadn’t she had unusual hair as well? He seemed to recall that it had gone prematurely white.

“Tell me again about the attack on the temple,” said Roger, trying to picture it clearly. How many raiders had she held off? He saw her standing before the altar, her feet planted like a warrior’s, wielding something akin to a halberd. In his mind’s eye, she wore silk Yamani robes, with the sleeves rolled up so she could fight properly. Her white hair was starting to come loose; perhaps there was a smear of blood on her cheek. Behind her, the imperial swords gleamed in the lamplight.

“After sailing into the cove,” Yves began, in his dry voice, “Scanran raiders ascended the outer wall along the northeastern side of the palace complex. From there, they made their way to — ”

“Not the details,” said Roger, annoyed. “Tell me about the aftermath. Did the emperor thank her personally? How did the news spread?”

There was power in an image, after all. Another memory occurred to him, a moment he hadn’t thought about in years.

Not long after his cousin’s death, on a rare sunny day in early winter, he had gone for a stroll through the palace grounds. Somewhere near Balor’s Needle, he had happened upon a pair of children, possibly brother and sister. Had they been servants’ children? He’d thought so, at the time. Absorbed in their game, they hadn’t noticed him. He drew back into the shadows, watching as they brandished sticks at each other. Horrified, he had watched the girl lunge at her companion, swinging her stick wildly as she’d cried, “I’m Lady Alanna!”

How had the girl even learned about Alanna of Trebond? He’d done his best to tarnish her reputation, sowing the seeds of suspicion, but despite all his efforts, something else had taken root. But now that he considered the incident dispassionately, having had a decade to cool his temper, Roger thought he understood. He’d underestimated the power of an image: that of a fierce girl with blazing red hair, swinging a magical sword. That was a figure out of legend. He could never have controlled that narrative, not entirely.

He thought of Baron Piers’s daughters, learning to use polearms with the Yamani noblewomen. Perhaps that had been his mistake: in chasing Alanna out of Corus all those years ago, he had inadvertently made her exceptional, a legend that would live on. He’d intended to ruin her reputation, so that there wouldn’t be any more young Tortallan noblewomen disguising themselves as boys to follow her into page training. At the time, he had thought he was doing the right thing to protect his throne. But what if instead he had chosen to make warrior women ordinary, as the Yamanis did?

Once he had finished warming up to the idea, Roger was surprised by how much resistance he faced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is there coffee in Carthak? Probably not, no, it's never mentioned in any of the books. Should there be? I think so, and I'll wreak havoc with the worldbuilding if I want to.


	4. The Wildcat and the Warlord’s Daughter

**439 H.E.**

The Shang Wildcat had said she would go easy on her. It wasn’t until the morning after their fight, when Alanna awoke to her muscles screaming in protest, that it fully sank in that she and Eda had different ideas of what “easy” meant.

“I’m all right,” she assured Coram, who watched her with concern as she began to run through her morning exercises in the yard behind the inn, moving more slowly than usual. “I’m just half dead. It’ll pass.”

She was nearly finished when Eda wandered into the yard. “You’re looking well,” she remarked, leaning against the fence.

“If you’re here to mock me,” said Alanna, “I’d rather you waited until I’m done with this.”

Eda chuckled. “Actually, I’m just here to see how you’re faring today, and if you ever wanted to do that again. You’re good, you know. You’d have survived Shang training, I think.”

Alanna stopped, startled. “I suppose I’m too old to learn now.” Not wanting to stand still for long, lest she stiffen up again, she began to stretch out her forearms. They rarely burned this much.

Eda cocked her head to one side, looking thoughtful. “Too old to become a Shang warrior, certainly. But not too old to learn some of how we fight.”

That sounded like an offer to her. She’d heard stories of visiting Shang warriors teaching whole villages to fight, and she knew that sometimes they stopped in Corus to teach the pages there unarmed combat, but she’d never heard of them taking on individual students before. “Would you teach me?” she asked, feeling oddly shy. She’d never met anyone like Eda before.

“If you’re willing to learn,” Eda replied, nodding briskly. “I’ll warn you now, it’s hard work.”

“I can work hard,” said Alanna eagerly. “Can we start now?”

When Coram heard about her Shang training later that morning, he shook his head slowly. “It’s good to see ye gettin’ into trouble again, lass, but are ye sure about this?”

She nodded. For the first time in well over a year, she’d found something that made her feel like she knew what she was doing with her life. “Completely sure.”

“Yer knuckles are bandaged,” he observed. “I’ll pick up a healing ointment for ye today.”

Alanna shrugged, annoyed. She hadn’t used her Gift to heal, or to do anything but light small fires, since Jon’s death. Nobody seemed more concerned about that than Coram, which was ridiculous given his lifelong fear of magic.

“Ye’re going to have to tell her yer real name at some point.”

“Later,” she said. “We still don’t know if we can trust her — but I think we can. Coram, she said I’m _good_ at this.” It was hard to put into words what that meant to her, after the way her squire training had ended, but from the look on Coram’s face, he understood.

With no strong reasons to stay in Berat or head north into Galla, but every reason now to stay with the Shang Wildcat, Alanna and Coram found themselves traveling east with her before the week was out. Coram had been more reluctant than her to venture into Sarain, though he’d admitted Eda’s goal of guarding refugees was a noble one.

“I’m starting to think ye have a death wish, lass,” he said to her one night along the road to Fort Jirokan, as they sat around the campfire. Alanna had just finished building the fire; Eda was off hunting rabbits for their supper. “Do ye plan to start usin’ yer Gift again in Sarain?”

Alanna gazed into the fire, considering that. She’d lit it with a spark of her magic. “If I have to, I suppose. I don’t have a death wish, Coram. I just want something to _do._ I didn’t go through years of page and squire training just to wander around aimlessly.”

“Fair enough. And if ye get yerself killed?”

“Well, we all have to die at some point. I’d rather do it defending farmers from bandits.”

He nodded gravely. “I’ll do my best to prevent that.”

He didn’t have the chance to say anything else before Eda returned, dragging a small boar behind her. Faithful trotted after her, his tail high. “Give me a hand with this beast, will you?” she said to them. “Your magic cat helped me hunt him down.”

“He’s not magic,” protested Alanna, not for the first time, as she got up to help.

Until they reached Fort Jirokan, Alanna’s spirits were lighter than they’d been since she’d left Corus over a year ago. The sight of the refugee camp outside the city’s walls sobered her. “They’re not protected out here,” she said to Eda, as they gazed upon the rows and rows of tents, the piles of furniture and crowds of livestock, the watchful people in worn and tattered clothes.

“That’s true, but most people think camps like this one breed theft and vice,” the Wildcat replied. “To be fair to the citizens of Fort Jirokan, though, there isn’t enough room for them all inside the city walls.”

They were the only travelers entering Sarain at first light the next morning. The men at the gate tried to argue with them, but eventually they let Eda and her party through. Beyond the border, the road was deserted. Seeing the burned-out farms and heaps of refuse alongside the road, Alanna felt an odd prickling over her skin, half unease and half anticipation, as though already she were bristling for a fight.

After four days of riding, they found the first bodies. Enemy combatants were piled together, already so decomposed that their bones showed in places. Alanna reined up, her throat tight, and dismounted. She surveyed the numbers of K’miri and lowlander dead, their weapons marked by hard fighting, and then began to gather wood and dry grasses. An ambush, from the looks of it. What a waste.

Eda and Coram had joined her. “We’ll see far more of this,” said the Wildcat. “I’ll warn you now, if we stop to light a pyre for every corpse we see, we’ll lose time. More than that, we’ll attract unwanted attention.”

Alanna didn’t trust herself to speak. She dropped the wood she’d gathered, turning toward the pile of bodies. She waved her hand over them, the same way she waved her hand over a campfire to light it. Within a few moments they were all alight. The fire had a faint purple tinge, and gave off no smoke.

Feeling slightly lightheaded, she returned to Moonlight’s side, to retrieve her water bottle. Poor Moonlight, always covered in dust now to disguise her gleaming coat and tail. Alanna was getting so tired of hiding.

Eda cleared her throat. “You didn’t mention you were a mage.”

“We were trying not to attract attention,” Coram mumbled.

The fire had already burned itself out, leaving behind only charred bones. “I know it hurts, not being able to do something for them,” said Eda, as they mounted up again. “But the sooner we find the living, the sooner we can try to help _them._ You don’t use your magic often, do you?”

Alanna shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“What can you do, besides light a fire?”

“Healing, mainly. But I — failed to save someone, once. It put me off magic for a time.” She was silent for a long while, listening to the sound of wind through the grass. “I’ll use it if I have to, though.”

“That’s good to hear. You may have to.”

They saw no signs of life as they continued riding through the afternoon, only open and empty countryside, with the remnants of farmhouses in the distance. After a few hours, the land to the north began to rise, giving way to forested hills and more distant mountains. They watched that side of the road closely, but if anyone was hiding there, they left Alanna and her companions alone.

When the sun began to sink toward the horizon behind them, they left the road and made camp under the shelter of the trees. Coram built a small fire and Eda dug them a latrine, while Alanna went in search of food. She could hear running water nearby, and it had been several days since they’d had fish for supper.

As she followed the sound of water, the wind carried an familiar scent to her nose: woodsmoke. An army camp nearby? Coram had taken care to keep his campfire smokeless. She reached for the dagger she wore at her hip.

Faithful, who had gone to scout ahead, came sprinting back to her. _People! There’s a camp near the stream down there, and more people in the woods beyond it._

“Refugees?” she whispered.

_In the camp, yes. Those in the woods looked like bandits to me._

“Get Coram and the Wildcat.”

He bounded away, and she continued toward the stream, moving noiselessly through the underbrush. Unless the refugees could fight, they would be badly outnumbered; even then, the bandits might overwhelm them. She would probably have to use her magic again.

She had brought her longbow with her, in case she’d have to hunt. Coming to the edge of the ridge overlooking the stream, she paused behind a broad oak tree to string her bow.

There was the refugee camp, barely hidden in the trees along the opposite shore of the stream. It looked easy enough to cross the water, especially if she kept to the rocks just south of the camp, but that would put her out in the open. She chewed her lower lip, considering the best way to approach.

About ten seconds later, someone else made the decision for her. In the stillness, the whistle of an arrow arcing through the air was loud. There came the duller sound of it hitting wood, probably a tree, and then she was off. Crashing through the underbrush, she scrambled down the hill, ran upstream to the line of rocks, and bounded across the water.

She’d startled the bandits. There were four of them in her line of sight, approaching the refugee camp from the north. Near the campfire, two young women stood back-to-back, braced for a fight and both wielding crossbows. The one nearest to Alanna wore a long dagger at her belt.

Alanna put an arrow to her bowstring and aimed, hitting one of the bandits with bows in the throat. As he fell with a grunt, a crossbow bolt struck a second man in the shoulder.

How many bandits were still hidden among the trees? As if in answer to her thought, she heard more boots crashing through the underbrush along the north side of the camp. Five more men had arrived, most of them armed with spears and axes. Alanna put another arrow to her bowstring.

Within minutes, Coram and Eda had reached them, the Wildcat crashing into the line of bandits with a feral cry. Even Alanna felt a chill when she heard it. The older woman fought barehanded, fists and feet lashing out with grim precision and preternatural speed. Coram followed her into the melee, his sword drawn.

There came another cry, this time from one of the women wielding crossbows. Alanna glanced toward them, alarmed. They were both still standing, but an arrow had buried itself in one woman’s shoulder. Ignoring it, she raised her crossbow again.

It wasn’t much longer before the fight was over. With most of the bandits dead or wounded, the odds had changed for them. The remaining men ran, one of them bleeding heavily from one arm. Alanna kept an arrow trained on them until they were well out of sight.

When she returned her attention to their new allies, she found their party had grown in size. A small group of children had emerged from the heavy underbrush along the southern edge of the camp, led by two girls who looked to be around twelve or thirteen.

The wounded young woman sat beside their campfire, her lovely face pale and damp with sweat. Her friend knelt beside her, examining her shoulder. It was a bad wound; the arrow was buried deep in muscle, if not bone. At the sight of it, Alanna felt cold. She clenched her fists, trying to keep her hands from shaking.

She took a long, slow breath, and then approached the campfire. “Here, let me have a look at it. I’m a healer.”

The unharmed girl looked up at her with deep suspicion. She was a few years younger than Alanna, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with a stocky build, black hair and dark eyes, and a small, upturned nose. “You?” she said in accented Common. “You’re only a boy.”

“First of all, I’m a girl. Second, do you have another healer?”

“At least let her look at it, Buri,” said the other woman.

Even sitting sprawled in the dirt, her face drawn tight with pain, she was easily the most beautiful girl Alanna had ever seen. Trying to ignore that, Alanna sank to her knees and began to examine her wound.

It had been years since she’d studied the treatment of arrow wounds under Duke Baird, but she had seen a number of them during the Tusaine War. The first question to answer was whether the arrow had lodged itself in the other girl’s bone. It would be harder to remove if it had, and she’d have to repair bone as well as muscle and tendons.

She laid her hand on the other girl’s bicep, shutting her eyes for a moment. Her magic was never far away; though she had tried to live without it, she had no trouble calling it back to her. She drew it up into her arm, letting it spill out of her hand into her patient’s shoulder, easing the pain as it probed the muscle, to see how deep the arrowhead lay.

The arrow had struck at a slight angle, perhaps as the girl had twisted away from it, and only grazed the bone. “I’m going to have to cut some of your shirt away,” Alanna told her, relieved. “Sorry about that.” Over her cotton shirt, the girl wore a fleece-lined vest, which could be spared.

“That’s all right.” She sounded as though she were trying to make idle conversation, but there was a rough edge in her low, musical voice. “That’s a fair trade for saving our lives.”

“You weren’t exactly helpless,” said Alanna, feeling oddly embarrassed.

“No, but we were outnumbered. What’s your name?”

Alanna hesitated for a moment. “I’m Eleni. That’s Coram, and Eda.”

The other girl attempted a smile, but it came off as more of a grimace. “I don’t know what you’re all doing here, but I can’t say I mind. I’m Thayet.”

That name was familiar. Alanna studied her as she cut away the other girl’s blood-soaked sleeve, trying to recall where she’d heard it. It was finely made shirt, albeit worn. She looked at the girl’s face again, realizing she’d seen it before. Where? Suddenly she remembered a moment she hadn’t thought of in years: a series of miniature paintings that Jon had shown her, not long after she’d become his squire, an array of potential brides.

“Not Thayet _jian_ Wilima?” She gazed with horror at the arrow buried in the other girl’s arm, at the princess sprawled beside her.

Thayet winced. “I’m afraid so.”

Alanna swallowed, feeling suddenly faint. Taking another deep breath, she focused her attention on the arrow. “This needs to come out. I’ll try to make it quick.”

Buri gave Thayet her hand to squeeze. All of Alanna’s attention was on the wound. It was a more delicate undertaking than she felt comfortable with, after months of refusing to do any healing magic, but she had no choice. One hand on Thayet’s arm, she let her magic seep into the wound, expanding as it filled the space between jagged metal and flesh. She poured as much cool relief into the wound as she could, but she couldn’t take away the pain entirely — Thayet’s harsh breathing told her that much. With her magic to ease the way, sweat pouring down her face, Alanna pulled the arrow out of Thayet’s shoulder.

Thayet cried out, but she didn’t faint. With that done, Alanna turned her attention to repairing chipped bone and tendons, blood vessels and muscle. She soothed the pain, and burned away the beginnings of an infection. Finally, when new skin covered the place where the wound had been, she let her hand fall away, exhausted.

Thayet lifted her arm slowly, gazing down at her bare shoulder. “Thank you.”

“It might be sore for a while,” said Alanna. “I hope there’s no lasting damage.”

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” observed Buri.

At some point during however long the healing had taken, Eda had left their campsite. Alanna watched, feeling lightheaded, as she returned carrying Alanna’s longbow and a pair of squirrels. “You’re not wrong,” she told one of the older children. “There’s no game in these woods. Couldn’t find any bandits, though.”

“I’ll bring the horses down,” said Coram, who had taken charge of the youngest child, an infant. The girl who had told Eda there was no game in the woods reached for the baby, and he handed the child to her. “We have enough food in our saddlebags to share.”

“She’s right,” said Thayet. “You should take a nap.” Smiling at her, she eased Alanna into a reclining position, with her head in Thayet’s lap.

“I’m fine,” Alanna mumbled, just before she fell asleep.

There was a great deal of work to be done in the wake of King Roald’s death, most of it unspeakably boring. After brief consideration, Alex decided that it was better to observe the proceedings firsthand if he could. He became a silent fixture at Roger’s meetings with his administrators, sprawled in a chair in the corner of the room, toying with his belt knife and listening carefully.

It was Wednesday morning, and he was on the verge of drifting off to sleep, when his king said a familiar name. “Now, with regards to Myles of Olau . . .”

Alex opened his eyes. Roger was smiling pleasantly, as usual, but there was a hard glint in his eyes. “He has served the court well for many years, but we think it time for a change. Given his history in trade, we think he would do very well as an ambassador. An ambassador to somewhere peaceful, of course, given his age.”

Alex bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at Roger’s new royal voice, at the rich timbre of it and the plural pronouns. He wasn’t glad to hear that Sir Myles was being sent away from court, and it wouldn’t do to look like he was. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, exactly.

“Elyot of Irimor _has_ been in Galla for nearly a decade now,” said one of the administrators, some younger son or cousin of House Fenrigh. “It would be a good idea to send someone new.”

“That’s a fine suggestion. Duke Gareth will choose a successor to teach the pages history and law, whom Sir Myles will train before leaving for Cría at the end of the summer. Baron Yves,” he said, addressing his new spymaster, “we ask that you send another agent or two to Galla ahead of Sir Myles, to ensure that his new venture begins smoothly.”

As the king leafed through the stack of documents in front of him, Alex twirled his belt knife slowly between his fingers, eyeing the baron. Yves of Sandhill was a small, pale man of about forty, with a plain, pinched face. He looked just like a spy: a little too shifty-eyed, but otherwise ordinary.

Roger frowned at his papers. He was always carrying lists and reports around with him now. After months of observing him, Alex felt certain that _he_ wouldn’t agree to become king for love or money. It was true that Roger looked very regal with that silver crown on his head, but he also seemed to rub his neck more often in the evenings, suggesting that the extra weight took its toll.

“Let’s see, we’ve already pulled the ambassador to Sarain out of that mess,” Roger continued, sounding thoughtful. “I do want to appoint a new ambassador to Maren, though, to keep a closer eye on what’s happening across the border. One of the younger diplomats, I think.” He turned to a junior member of House Legann, who had served as an ambassador to the Copper Isles for several years. “Lord Gelvan, is there anyone you would suggest?”

Lord Gelvan frowned, thinking this over, and Alex closed his eyes again, leaning his head back against the wall. “A few names come to mind — Geoffrey of Blue Harbor, perhaps, or Piers of Mindelan. I would suggest Edric of Wellam, but I think he’s too young.”

Feeling someone’s gaze upon him, Alex opened one eye, and discovered that Gary was glaring at him. “Really?” he murmured, barely moving his lips. “You’re taking a nap here?”

Alex shrugged. “Where’s Mindelan? Never heard of it.”

For a moment he thought Gary wasn’t going to answer. “It’s a barony near the Scanran border,” he whispered finally.

“Ah, another barony I’d never heard of,” murmured Alex, gazing over at the new spymaster again. “So they were probably merchants until last year.”

“Lord Geoffrey, then,” he heard Roger say, and realized he had missed part of the conversation. “In addition, we’ve decided to appoint Dunstan of Genlith Lord High Chancellor of the Council of Mages. Now, as for the situation in Carthak . . .”

When they were all set free half an hour later, Gary followed Alex out of the assembly room. “Where are you off to?” he asked, as he fell into step with him.

“Practice courts,” said Alex, walking a little faster. It wouldn’t help, he knew. Gary’s legs were longer, so the best way to dodge him without outright sprinting was just to wait until he gave up, or to create some kind of diversion.

“You’re certainly comfortable in your new position,” said Gary, after they’d left the other administrators behind. “Napping in front of the king.”

He shrugged. “I’m not even required to attend most of these meetings.”

Gary shook his head slowly. “Haven’t you thought about how it looks?”

Alex knew exactly how all of it looked: like a farce. In the first act, the sorcerer’s royal relatives had died off, one by one, with everyone around him unaware of the plot they were in. The second act, curiously, was about government bureaucracy, full of tedious dialogue about crop yields and the strengthening of infrastructure. Gods only knew what the third act would feature. Alex had never asked for a starring role in the play, yet here they were.

“So we’re banishing Myles of Olau to Galla,” he said, beginning to stretch out his arms. “That’s a shame. All those future generations of pages are going to miss the opportunity to argue with him. Of course, it makes sense. Nothing at all has happened in Galla since the Tyrant Wars. Myles is going to have a very dull retirement there.”

Gary looked around nervously, though they were alone in the corridor. “In case you were wondering, O King’s Champion Napper, a lot of people consider ‘banish’ to be a strong word.”

“Oh come off it, you saw what was happening there as plainly as I did. And for the record, I wasn’t even asleep.”

Gary sighed. “And if I did see it? What can I do about it? Do _you_ intend to do anything about it?”

“No,” Alex admitted, relenting.

“Good,” said Gary, smiling rather sadly. “I don’t want you to have to leave Corus all of a sudden for an indefinite amount of time. I like you better here.” For a moment he looked as though he were about to say something else, but then the moment passed. “Listen, I have some reports to finish, but I might visit the practice courts this afternoon.”

“You should. You’re probably very rusty by now.” He clapped Gary on the shoulder, feeling a pang of regret as he turned and walked away. It had been a long time since he’d felt comfortable in his friendship with Gary, like the easy familiarity of slipping on an old shirt. Sometimes he missed that, but he couldn’t seem to find his way back.

He didn’t go to the practice courts. Instead he found himself wandering the palace, without any particular aim in mind, until he ended up in front of Sir Myles’s office door. He raised his fist to knock, and then lowered it. It had been a stupid notion; he was probably last on the list of people Myles would want to talk to today. He turned to leave, and found himself face to face with Myles.

“Ah, Alex,” said Myles, smiling at him. “If you’ve come to inform me of the king’s decision, I’m afraid I already know.”

Alex stared at him. “How?”

“I keep my ear to the ground. Would you like to come in?”

Feeling suspicious and slightly dazed, Alex nodded. He followed Myles into his office, accepting a glass of wine when Myles offered it. “I never did congratulate you on your recent achievement,” said Myles as they sat down together. “King’s Champion is quite an honor. Well done.”

“Thank you.”

Myles studied his face. “Perhaps I’m wrong, but you seem conflicted about it.”

He had never asked for the position. Once — years ago, a few months before Alex had taken his Ordeal of Knighthood — Roger had gracefully lost a fencing match to him and then, as he toweled the sweat from his face, said casually, “You’re going to be the finest swordsman in the realm soon. Perhaps my cousin will ask you to be his Champion. _I_ would, if the throne should come to me.” In the end, however, he hadn’t actually asked; instead he had told Alex about his role in the impending coronation ceremony, as though simply reminding him of something he’d already agreed to.

“I’m not conflicted,” said Alex, whose mother had, at least, been very proud when he’d written to tell her the news. In her reply, she had written that his father would have been very proud as well, although Alex wasn’t as certain of that. “It’s a great honor. As is being the ambassador to Galla.”

“Yes, it certainly is. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect such a change in scenery at my age. I’ve heard that Cría is very nice, though.”

Alex took a sip of wine, trying to drown the strange lump in his throat. “I’m sure it’s peaceful. I hope you like it there.”

“Yes,” said Myles, smiling slightly. The look in his eyes was a troubled one. “I hope that you also find happiness in your new role in life.”

They left the campsite at first light the next morning. Buri, Coram, and Eda had kept a rotating watch through the night. Though none of them had seen or heard any sign of more bandits, they didn’t want to risk staying there another night.

Alanna had only risen once that evening, to eat supper and find a place under the trees where she could stretch out her bed roll. Like Thayet, she slept soundly and awoke still groggy. After forcing herself to wash up and drink some water, she pushed herself through her morning exercises with Eda.

“Healing takes a lot out of you, doesn’t it?” remarked the Wildcat, easily blocking one of Alanna’s weak punches.

After sharing a cold breakfast, they moved on in company with Thayet’s party. Buri hadn’t looked entirely happy about their continued presence, but she hadn’t complained. Except for the baby, whom Buri carried in a sling, the children rode, with the two older girls riding Coram’s Anvil, and the younger children — two boys and girl, all aged around ten — riding Moonlight. Leading Anvil, Coram walked at the head of their party, and Eda brought up the rear, with Alanna and Thayet walking alongside Moonlight together.

“I was going to keep carrying the baby,” said Thayet, “but Buri insisted.”

“How’s your shoulder?” asked Alanna.

“Still a little sore, but I can fight if need be.”

Alanna shook her head slowly, wondering where a princess had learned to fight. Not that she wasn’t grateful for it. An image flashed into her mind, of Thayet wielding her crossbow against the bandits, and she smiled. She wished that she’d known women like her, and like Eda and Buri, when she was growing up.

As they walked along, she learned from Thayet that the children, save for the baby, had been students at the Mother of Mountains convent to the north of where they were now. Thayet had found the baby a few days earlier. “Soldiers killed his family when they tried to flee the approaching army,” she told Alanna quietly. “I don’t know whether they left him to die, or if they just missed him.”

They were bound for the Mother of Waters in Rachia, four days’ ride to the south. It would be a much longer walk, especially with most of their party hungry and exhausted. They kept a slower pace than Alanna would usually have liked, stopping to rest often.

“Where do you come from?” Thayet asked her, as they gathered under the trees just off the road. The children dozed in the grass around them; Coram hummed quietly as he tended to the horses.

“Tortall. Coram and I are newly come from there, and Eda — she was born in Tortall, but she’s been traveling for most of her life.”

“How did you meet a Shang warrior? The Shang Bear visited my father’s court once, a few years back,” she explained, when Alanna looked at her, surprised. “I watched him fight. Once you’ve met one Shang warrior, it’s not hard to recognize their fighting style. Besides, it’s rare to meet a woman who can fight, unless she’s K’miri or Shang. Where did _you_ learn?”

It was hard not to trust Thayet instinctively. When she focused her attention on you, it was as though everyone else faded from view. Under the force of her hazel eyes, her friendly smile and genuine interest, Alanna struggled not to tell her everything. “Coram taught me when I was young.”

“Eda said he was your father, but you don’t call him that.”

“Adoptive father,” she said, and it didn’t feel like a lie. “My real father didn’t have much interest in raising me.”

Thayet’s mouth twisted. “I know what that’s like.”

Alanna had been wondering about that. “Why aren’t you with him?” she asked. “Why are you roaming the mountains?”

Thayet looked away, across the rolling countryside. “My mother sent me away to the convent,” she said evenly, after a long moment of silence. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard about my family, but — she was K’miri, you see, and my father hates the K’mir. He wrote that hatred into law, forbidding the K’mir from gathering in large groups. They can’t gather to protest unfair treatment; they can’t even celebrate marriages, funerals, births. My mother tried to reason with him, to get him to retract the new laws, but he wouldn’t see reason.”

“What happened?”

“She spoke out against the laws in her death chant,” Thayet replied, her gaze fixed on the eastern horizon. “Buri’s mother and brother kept the guards from breaking into her room, and she jumped from the tower. They’re buried at her right and left hands now.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alanna quietly.

“So am I. But they did what they thought was right, and I can’t disagree. A lot of people heard her death chant, and some of them changed their minds about the K’mir that day.”

The memory of that conversation haunted Alanna, as they moved on through the ravaged countryside that afternoon. Throughout her travels in Sarain, it was hard not to think about the likelihood of civil war in Tortall. Her second letter from Sir Myles, sent care of one of his friends in Tyra, had broken the news to her that King Roald had died just two weeks after the queen, in a so-called hunting accident. It was hard not to feel certain that Tortall was doomed, now that Roger was king.

When the afternoon began to give way to evening, they made camp near an abandoned farmstead nestled in the foothills. There was a stream there, running along the edge of what had once been a pasture for sheep or goats. Alanna knelt beside it, splashing her face with cold water. At the sound of footsteps, she glanced up, one hand on the hilt of her dagger.

Buri handed her the baby. “Here. Eda and I are going foraging. From the looks of it, you and Thayet are still exhausted, and your father’s building a fire.”

Alanna froze. “I can’t take care of a baby,” she protested, as Buri adjusted the placement of her hands.

“Who raised you, bears? You’re acting like you’ve never held a baby before.”

“I haven’t!”

Buri looked at her as though she’d just grown a second head. “There are babies _everywhere.”_

“Nobody ever asked me to hold one before!”

“You’ll figure it out. There are clean diapers and goat’s milk in your saddlebags. If you’re not sure what to do, ask Thayet for help.” She saluted Alanna and wandered off, carrying her crossbow.

Alanna watched her go, feeling profoundly jealous. Next time she’d be quicker; she’d volunteer for hunting and foraging duty before anyone else had the chance. She turned her attention to the baby with a sigh. “Well, how hard can it be? I made it through more than seven years of page and squire training, didn’t I?”

In response, the baby screwed up his small face and began to scream.

In the shelter of a nearby grove of trees, she found Coram building a fire and Thayet entertaining the younger children with a story, scratching pictures in the dirt with a stick as she spoke. Alanna didn’t understand K’miri, but she liked the sound of the language when Thayet spoke it. She was sorry to interrupt her by hurrying over to them with a wailing baby in her arms. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she said. “I tried rocking him, but it didn’t work.”

“In need of a diaper change, I’d wager,” said Coram, getting to his feet.

Alanna lifted the baby toward her face, inhaled experimentally, and nearly gagged. “Oh. You’re right.”

He found clean diapers in one of the saddlebags, just as Buri had said. While he showed Alanna how to change the baby, Thayet heated some goat’s milk in a pan over the fire.

“How did you learn all of this?” Alanna asked him, astounded, when the baby was clean and dry. It hadn’t taken her long to learn how to tie a diaper competently, she was pleased to say.

“I was the oldest,” he replied. “There were four more after me. Later on, I used to watch the little ones while their mothers were workin’ in the fields, before ye and yer brother came along.” The baby clutched his finger, and he grinned down at him. “A grip like iron. This one will be a blacksmith, mark my words.”

Alanna watched him, feeling odd. It had never occurred to her before to wonder what Coram had given up, in working for Trebond and caring for her and Thom. “Did you want a family of your own?”

He met her eyes, smiling. “Haven’t I got one? I raised ye, after all. I’ve no complaints of my life.”

**452 H.E.**

He was going to turn Lerant into a passable swordsman if it killed him.

When he was feeling nice, which wasn’t very often, Alex had to admit that the boy wasn’t all that bad. He was a talented archer, his riding and wrestling skills were good, and with a sword he could hold his own against most of the other squires. If left to his own devices, he would turn out to be a perfectly average knight: not as good as some, but with any luck, better than most.

Alexander of Tirragen was not about to let any squire of his, especially not the queen’s nephew, turn out to be average.

In truth, he hadn’t really noticed Lerant before the page examinations, and he wouldn’t have taken him on if Delia hadn’t asked him nicely. She could be charming when she wanted to be, and besides, he didn’t want her complaining about him to the king.

“Let’s begin again,” he said, as Lerant shook out his sword arm, wincing.

Lerant frowned, an indication he was about to argue with him. “The pages are going to arrive any minute now, my lord, for their training.”

“Let them. They can watch yours.” Alex rolled his shoulders back, working out a few last kinks left over from the night before. With each passing year his muscles seemed to protest more and more after a night’s rest. Had he ever argued with his teachers? He couldn’t recall. Not about his sword training, surely.

Lerant gritted his teeth. “We’ve been here for two hours, you madman. I’m starving.”

Alex only had to raise his eyebrow, and his squire sighed. “Guard,” he muttered, assuming the stance.

Their second bout was over more quickly than the first. At the end of it, Lerant found himself in an easily defensible lunge, with his blade at slightly the wrong angle and the point of Alex’s practice sword at his throat. “Perhaps you’re tired,” Alex murmured thoughtfully, before stepping back and lowering his sword.

“Mithros,” gasped Lerant, “you haven’t even broken a sweat, have you?”

Aware that they had an audience now, Alex sheathed his sword and began to stretch out his arms, his attention on Lerant. “Your shoulders tense up when you’re about to attack, did you know that?” he asked, as Lerant put away his practice sword and reached eagerly for his water bottle. “It signposts the attack, and it’s better not to be rigid anyway. Relax.”

“Anything else, my lord?” asked Lerant, in between gulps of water. “Any more gentle criticism?”

Alex did his best to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. Delia coddled the boy, he thought. “You have a tendency to step back when you parry, which makes it harder to turn that into an attack.”

“Lord Tirragen,” said a dry voice behind him, “please don’t kill your squire. We do have a finite number of them.”

Alex turned to face the intruders, smiling politely. The training master stood just beyond the fence, with the new pages behind them. They seemed to get smaller every year, a sea of tiny, worried faces. “Good morning, Wyldon,” he said. “I’ll let you have the practice courts, then.”

He looked the pages over, vaguely curious as to which one of them was the girl. They all looked more or less the same, with their cropped hair and eye-smarting red and gold uniforms. A few of them were staring directly at him, their eyes wide. Some of the others didn’t seem to know who he was. He was able to pick Lerant’s younger brother out of the crowd, but that was it.

“Did you want to watch your brother practice for a bit?” he asked, as they relinquished the court to Wyldon and his charges.

Lerant frowned at him again, and then shrugged. “I suppose watching Jasson make a fool of himself might cheer me up a bit. But I _am_ hungry, my lord.”

They leaned against the fence surrounding the outdoor practice court, watching the pages begin their staff work. Within a few minutes it was obvious which page was the girl, because of how Wyldon treated her. Hearing “Block higher, probationer!” for the second time, Alex shook his head slowly.

Wyldon prided himself on his sense of fairness. It grated on Alex, who had never cared for people who liked to show off their virtues. But if this was Wyldon trying to be fair to the girl page, he was going about it in a very strange way. Didn’t he realize he was correcting her far more often than the boys?

She was tall and stocky for a child of ten, with mouse-brown hair cropped to her chin and a determined set to her mouth. Watching her, Alex found that he liked the way she didn’t seem to be biting back a sarcastic retort whenever Wyldon corrected her. In the same position, Alanna would have had trouble keeping her mouth shut. But this girl just raised her staff a little, and went on blocking her partner’s strikes, over and over.

“Can we get breakfast?” asked Lerant.

“All right,” Alex said, and led him away from the practice courts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kel will return in the next chapter.
> 
> Some of the dialogue here is taken from _Lioness Rampant._ Some of Alex's dialogue in the last scene is taken from my fencing teachers, who are frequently disappointed in me.


	5. The Girl From Snowsdale

**439 H.E.**

A few days after meeting Thayet and Buri, Alanna realized that she’d run into a problem. The sun was rising as she finished up her training with the Shang Wildcat that morning. As she reached down to touch her toes, stretching out her aching muscles, Eda remarked, “I’m afraid you’ve been caught out, my dear.”

Alanna straightened, frowning at her. “What do you mean?”

“I tried to let you go at your own pace, you know. I figured that in time, you’d start to trust me, and eventually you’d tell me who you really are. But these Saren girls are starting to piece things together. Yesterday, Buri told me she thinks you’re a noblewoman.”

Alanna felt cold. “She said that?”

“She isn’t the only one who’s come to that conclusion. It’s your accent, lass. Tortallan nobles have a certain refined drawl. Usually you manage to talk like a commoner, but every so often it slips out, especially when you’re tired.”

Alanna sighed, running a hand through her hair. “How long have you known?”

Eda shrugged. “I figured it out within a few days. If it’s any consolation, at first I really thought you might be a merchant’s daughter. What’s your real name?”

They’d gotten this far together, so Alanna couldn’t think of a reason to lie to her any longer. She told her, and Eda let out a low whistle. “Trebond,” repeated the Wildcat. “I won’t try to guess what you’ve run away from. I probably wouldn’t get it right.”

“It was the royal palace. I disguised myself as a boy so I could train to be a knight.”

Eda didn’t look too surprised by that. “How far along did you get?” she asked, approvingly.

“They caught me a few months before my Ordeal.”

“So you’re as good as a knight, then. Good for you. Still got your sword?”

“It’s hidden among Coram’s weapons.”

Eda nodded, understanding in her eyes. “That pretty one he never uses. Makes sense. You might as well start carrying it openly now.”

Alanna smiled at her, grateful. She had imagined telling Eda about her past before, but in her daydreams it had never gone quite like this. The relief of being understood surprised her; she felt as though she’d been washed clean by a great wave.

“I heard a rumor that there’s a new king in Tortall,” said Eda, as they headed back toward their campsite for breakfast. “Which one ran you out of Corus? If it was the old one, you might try appealing to the new one, since you were so far along in your training.”

“No,” said Alanna, shuddering at the thought of that. “We never got along.”

“Fair enough.” She was silent for a moment. “I’ve been wondering something. You might know the answer. Who’s the queen of Tortall now?”

Sir Myles had mentioned Roger’s wedding in his last letter, so Alanna was pretty sure she could answer that. “Delia of Eldorne, I think,” she replied, remembering how she’d let out a bitter laugh upon reading that. “Unless he’s already had her killed off.”

Eda shook her head slowly, as if bewildered by the news. “Eldorne. Well, I’ll be. I heard that in passing, back in Maren, and I didn’t believe it.”

“No?” said Alanna, puzzled.

“I grew up near Eldorne,” Eda reminded her, as they settled down to breakfast. “When I was a child, they would never have let a hillwoman become queen.”

Delia wasn’t a hillwoman. Alanna opened her mouth to argue, and then realized that maybe she was wrong. She probably didn’t know as much about Hill Country as Eda did. “Do you miss Tortall?” she asked her, instead.

Eda gave that some thought. “Sometimes. I haven’t visited in over a decade now, and I wasn’t there for long the last time.” She was silent for a moment, staring thoughtfully into the fire as she chewed a strip of dried meat. “When I was younger, I never minded being away from home, but the older I get . . . Shang masters don’t usually live long, you know. I’ve been lucky so far. I wouldn’t mind seeing Hill Country again, before I die.”

After breakfast, they continued on toward Rachia, moving quickly through the highlands. There were signs that bandits had been in the area recently, and they didn’t care to meet more of those. On the road, Alanna found herself walking alongside Thayet and Buri in silence. She watched them, a little jealous of the way they seemed to communicate with each other without words. She’d had that with Thom, growing up, and later on with Jon, but never with another girl. She made up her mind to talk to them when they stopped to rest, and get it over with.

A few hours later, she stretched out in the shade under a pine tree, glad to rest her feet. She’d eaten a little, and drunk her fill of water from a nearby stream. “I figure I might as well tell you who I really am,” she began. The other girls looked up at her, startled. “Since Eda says you’ve already guessed part of the story.”

Thayet and Buri glanced at each other before turning their attention back to Alanna. “Go on,” said Thayet, smiling her encouragement.

Amidst numerous interruptions, Alanna told them the truth. “How did you get the idea?” asked Thayet breathlessly, after she’d told her about the plan she and Thom had hatched.

Alanna tried to remember where it had come from precisely, and couldn’t. “It just — seemed like the right thing to do,” she said finally. “I was always better at hunting and riding than Thom. He wouldn’t have lasted a week of page training.”

“When you say you switched places with him,” said Buri dryly, “does that mean he went to the convent in skirts?”

She grinned at the thought of that. “To the Mithran Masters.”

“When did they catch you?” asked Thayet. “Did you manage to get through your page training?”

Alanna nodded. “And most of my squire training. About two months before my Ordeal, the king’s nephew found me out. He told the king, who wasn’t very happy about it.”

“Why didn’t the prince speak on your behalf?” demanded Thayet, incensed. “You were his squire; he should have said something.”

“Duke Roger didn’t tell him about it. He was in the training yards during our audience with the king, and nobody sent for him. They made me pack my bags and get out before he got back.”

Thayet’s eyes blazed. “They were afraid of publicity. That shows they thought you’d have allies.”

“Not many allies, probably, after word got out,” Alanna said gloomily. She couldn’t imagine who would have spoken for her besides Jon and Sir Myles, and probably Gary and Raoul. Perhaps Duke Gareth, though that seemed like a long shot. It was more likely that he would have been angry that she’d fooled him for the better part of the decade.

She told them about the circumstances of Jon’s death, and Roger’s ascension to the throne. “So you see, I couldn’t have stayed in Tortall.”

“What about your brother?” asked Thayet.

“He’s still at court, as far as I know. He didn’t want to make an enemy of the king.” The question had brought up an old, constant worry for her. Myles’s last letter, sent to her care of one of his former students in Berat, had told her that Thom was safe and well — but by the time she’d read it, that information was nearly two months old. “I hope he’s all right.”

With her secret out, she could openly resume her sword practice. Thayet rose before dawn the next morning to watch her first bout with Eda. Alanna tried to ignore her small audience as she ran through her drills to warm up: the princess, sitting a safe distance away with the youngest refugee girl, Nisa, half-asleep in her lap, both of them wrapped in a horse blanket against the chill of the morning.

At the first clash of swords, Nisa sat up a little straighter, so she could applaud when something exciting happened. Thayet joined her. “Quietly, now,” she cautioned the girl. “Sound carries. Instead of cheering for them, let’s raise our fists like this.”

When the bout was over, she got up and led Nisa over to Alanna. “Here, why don’t we stretch with them. Go ahead and copy what the Wildcat is doing.”

She turned her attention to Alanna, laughing with delight. “You looked so gallant, Alanna. I wish I could see you in full plate armor.”

Alanna laughed too, embarrassed. “The best I have is that battered mail shirt you’ve already seen.” Her friends had given her a suit of gold-washed mail for her eighteenth birthday, but she had left it behind at Castle Trebond; after being sent away from the palace, she couldn’t bear to look at it, and they had needed to travel light anyway. She had brought the riding gloves they’d given her, though.

Thayet linked arms with her as they walked back toward their campfire. Eda followed them, listening good-naturedly to Nisa, who peppered her with questions about her Shang training.

“You’re good with them,” Alanna said quietly to Thayet. “The children.” Sometimes she watched in the evenings as Thayet sat with the younger children around the fire, scratching words into the dirt with a stick. They had been learning to read at the convent, before the war had interrupted their lives there.

“I like them. They’ve been very brave.” Thayet was silent for a moment. “Sometimes I think, if I’d been born a commoner or even a low-ranking noblewoman, I might have become a teacher.”

“You still could.” They hadn’t spoken much about Thayet’s plans for after they got to Rachia. Alanna knew that her cousin was the First Daughter of the Mother of Waters, one of the convents there, and Thayet hoped she would allow her to stay there. Beyond that, Alanna didn’t know anything about her plans for the future. Did she mean to become a priestess? It seemed like a waste, for this vibrant woman to hide herself behind temple walls.

Thayet shook her head, smiling. “We’ll see.”

As they sat down to breakfast, she asked, “You didn’t mind the audience, did you? I hope not, I loved watching you fight.”

Alanna’s face felt uncomfortably warm; she hoped she wasn’t blushing. “No, I didn’t mind.”

“If you’d ever like more company . . . I think Buri wants to practice with you, but she’s too shy to say so.”

Alanna glanced sidelong at her, amused. Buri, shy? Nonsense. _Thayet_ wanted to practice with her. “I’ll ask Eda, but if she doesn’t mind, you can both join us. How could I refuse a princess?” she added, teasingly.

Thayet grinned at her. “I’d love to. I’m not nearly as good as Buri, but I know a little of the K’miri fighting arts. I’ll do my best to keep up with you.” She hesitated, and then leaned over and, impulsively, kissed Alanna on the cheek.

Alanna froze, startled, a surge of uncomfortable heat rushing through her. Was this what she’d missed out on, when she’d refused to go to the convent all those years ago? Was this how girls acted around each other? Suddenly she missed the clarity of her friendships with Gary and Raoul, the rough affection of clapping another boy on the back or challenging him to a friendly wrestling match.

“Oh no,” said Thayet, trying to hide a smile. “I’ve embarrassed you.”

“I grew up around _boys_ ,” Alanna protested. Now her face was red for sure.

“Sorry. Shall I punch you lightly next time? Is that what boys do?”

“Yes, please,” said Alanna, laughing with relief. “Aim for the shoulder, not the face.”

**452 H.E.**

Kel thought that the more time she spent with Peachblossom, the better they might get along. After page training started, it was hard to get even five minutes of free time, but she tried to visit her horse at least once a week outside of riding lessons, if she could.

Usually she visited him after supper, when the stables were deserted. Lost in thought over a problem she still had to finish for mathematics class, Kel walked half the length of the stables before she realized she wasn’t alone. She stopped, frowning, and listened. Someone was standing just outside of Peachblossom’s stall, talking very softly. 

“The one that did that won’t abuse another mount, you can take my word for it.” That was Stefan’s voice. “Now, I’ve done what I can for his scars, but he’s ruined for knight’s work. I wish it weren’t so. The page who’s taken him on is a good ‘un, and he pays her back with trouble every day.”

“‘Ruined’ is a harsh word,” said a second quiet voice, a female voice. “Especially when we’re talking about something like knight’s work. Better to say this headstrong fellow is above that kind of butchery.”

Kel’s eyes widened in shock. She could see Stefan Groomsman, the head hostler, standing half-concealed in shadow at the far end of the stables. She couldn’t see the second speaker, which suggested that there was someone actually standing inside of Peachblossom’s stall. To make matters more astonishing, it didn’t sound as though Peachblossom were biting her. Kel began to creep forward again, taking care to stay quiet.

“Well, I can mend his scars and soften his mouth,” the unknown woman continued, “but if some brute in armor is going to be forever dragging at the reins and spurring him, he may wish I hadn’t. What will you have me do?” She had a slight accent that suggested she was from northeastern Tortall, or even Galla.

A mouse ran over Kel’s foot. She gasped, startled. There seemed to be more mice around the castle grounds these past few days — more wildlife in general, really — and she wasn’t sure why.

The mouse darted into the shadows. She hadn’t stepped on it, and it hadn’t bitten her. Secure in that knowledge, she took a deep breath to calm her racing heart, and then realized that Peachblossom’s stall had been silent for a while. They must have heard her.

It was time to reveal herself. Kel stepped forward, clearing her throat. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve come to visit Peachblossom.” She retrieved the apple she’d hidden in her tunic.

Stefan jumped slightly when he saw her, his eyes wide and his face pale. Evidently she had caught him doing something he’d wanted to keep secret. Had something happened to one of the horses that he wanted to conceal? She didn’t like that idea, and it seemed contrary to what she knew of his character. Had he sent for a healer that hadn’t been officially approved by whoever outranked Stefan?

Kel peered into the stall, getting her first look at the woman inside it. It was a shock to see her standing so close to Peachblossom, and to see her horse looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him before.

The woman was younger than Kel had expected from the note of authority in her low voice. She was dressed like a traveler, with a worn dark cloak over her plain, ill-fitting gown, the hood pulled up to hide her brown curls. She smiled when she saw Kel, though there was a worried look in her blue-gray eyes. “I may have been hasty,” she said, making it sound like an apology. “He says you’re not one for using the reins hard.”

Kel glanced at Stefan, puzzled. She hadn’t heard him say anything of the kind.

“It was a foolish idea,” said Stefan, “asking you to have a look at so many of the horses. You’ve come for what’s yours, and I’d better take you to the stable I’ve been keeping ‘em in before anyone else comes by.”

“I don’t mind at all,” the healer assured him. “I’ve plenty of unfinished business here, and I plan to stay the night if I have to.” She turned back to Kel, smiling at her. “I’m sorry, we weren’t introduced. My name is Daine. What’s yours?”

Beside Kel, Stefan shook his head slowly, as if bewildered by her honesty.

“I’m Kel,” she said, still puzzled. “It’s kind of you to heal Peachblossom. I never realized he was in so much pain.”

“It makes him grumpy,” agreed Daine. “But that’s partly just his nature, and I won’t change that. He says he’ll mind his manners more if you promise not to use spurs — or at least, not the kind that cut the horse. He’ll settle for those.”

Kel frowned, looking at her and then at Peachblossom, who met her eyes calmly. “I’m sorry — you make it sound like you’ve been _talking_ to him.” She didn’t know much about magic, but she was fairly certain that was impossible. A Gift for healing animals was common enough, but she’d never heard of anyone carrying on a conversation with a warhorse before.

“That’s right,” she said cheerfully.

Well, Kel was no sorcerer. She’d have to ask Neal about this sort of thing later. “I have to use spurs when we start learning to ride in armor, but I promise to get the kind that won’t cut him. I’ll have to find ways of making him go faster or slow down, though.”

Daine nodded. “Stefan trains some of his horses using spoken commands, though it’s rare to find a knight who will agree to use them. They tend to think it’s a bit silly, though they’ll talk to their hounds without blinking. Peachblossom says you already visit the stables more often than the other pages, so you could learn the commands then.”

“I’ll teach her,” offered Stefan, “if you’ll help teach them to this fine fellow.”

Kel offered her apple to Peachblossom, thinking about what a marvel it would be, to be able to talk to him and know that he understood. Was it a rare talent, she wondered, or something that any mage could learn?

The gelding stepped back so he could turn away from Daine. Then he moved forward again, stopping a few inches from Kel’s hand, and gently accepted the apple in his teeth. “Thank you,” she said to him, surprised. As Peachblossom snuffled her tunic in search of more apples, she turned back to Daine. “Thank you. That would be a blessing.”

**449 H.E.**

Myles of Olau never missed the great fair held in Cría every spring. Even when he didn’t have any business to conduct there, he liked wandering amongst the stalls, chatting with the vendors. This year he was in need of a new horse: his favorite mare, Dumpling, was getting too old to ride. After buying an almond tart and talking for a while with the baker, he made his way over to the horse pens.

He was looking over a dapple gray gelding that he thought might suit him when someone nearby spoke, and he couldn’t help but listen. “Excuse me — Trader Brice? I heard you was hiring.” It was a girl’s voice, with an accent that suggested she was from the countryside north of the capital. Myles glanced up.

She was about thirteen, he’d guess. She was thin and tan, a couple of inches taller than Alanna had been at that age, with brown curls that fell to her shoulders. In one hand she held an unstrung longbow, nearly as big as she was; behind her stood a shaggy gray pony carrying two packs.

The horse trader in charge of the neighboring pen looked her over, skepticism on his thin face. “Are you experienced in the buying and selling of horses?” He sounded as though he were from southern Tusaine.

“No, but I’m — I’m a fair hand with animals. All kinds.”

The horse trader looked slightly disappointed. “I’m in the market for an assistant who can handle himself on the road, not a farm girl.”

“I can handle myself on the road,” she assured him. “I walked here from Snowsdale, about two weeks north of here.”

“Hm,” he replied. “Is that your bow?”

She glared up at him, her jaw set. “Yessir. I’d not have the nerve to carry it otherwise.”

“String it, then.”

Her longbow was as big as any soldier’s, and looked unwieldy for a girl her age, but she handled it easily. She took a coiled string out of the sash around her waist and fitted it to one end of the bow. With that end of the bow set against her boot, the wood bent easily in her hands, and she finished stringing it without fumbling or hesitating. When she drew her bowstring, Myles saw that she wore guards to protect her forearms, and shook his head slowly. If the horse trader didn’t start to change his tune now, he would be a fool.

“I’d put an arrow up,” said the girl, “but surely I’d hit someone.”

“Hm,” said Brice again. “Well, you said you were good with animals. Follow me.”

Myles watched as she followed him over to the pen, which was crowded with graceful, hot blooded racing horses from the plains of southeastern Galla, just north of the Marenite border.

“Most of these won’t sell in Cría,” Brice explained to her. “When the fair is over, I’m taking them south into Tusaine, to the capital. Making good time, it’s nearly three weeks’ drive. The faster we get them south, the better. Climb in, so I can see how you handle them.”

The girl glanced back at her pony. “Stay put, and _no biting_ ,” she said to it, before climbing over the fence.

The horses flicked their ears back as she passed among them, their hooves dancing nervously. When one of them snapped its head toward her, teeth parted, she spun around to face it. Her hands on the horse’s muzzle, she stared into its eyes. “No, sir,” she said. “I’ll not stand for any tricks. I may be human, but I’m not stupid.”

The horse tried to rear. She forced him down with gentle hands, and blew into his nostrils. When he bowed his head in submission to her, Brice drew the Sign against evil over his chest.

Myles stared at him, appalled. The horse trader was a fool after all. How had he never met anyone with horse magic before, in his line of work? Not having seen Brice’s reaction, the girl moved among the racing horses, greeting them and giving them bits of apple and sugar from her pockets.

“Come out of there,” called the horse trader, his voice tinged with fear. “Listen, I know you’re most likely a runaway. Go home to your family, or your master, or whomever.”

She climbed back over the fence, her face stormy. “I’m not a runaway. I got no family left except Cloud. I’d go home if I _could_.”

“Excuse me,” said Myles, turning away from the dapple gray gelding he’d been examining. “I couldn’t help but overhear. My name is Sir Myles of Olau, and as it happens, I’m in need of a stablehand.”

The girl looked warily at him, hesitating. Then she approached him, leaving the horse trader from Tusaine behind. “You’re a knight?”

“I know it’s a surprise to look at me now, but technically yes.”

She blushed. “Sorry — I didn’t mean — ”

“It’s all right. I was only joking.”

She bit her lip and then nodded, as if coming to a decision. “Where’s Olau?”

“It’s in northwestern Tortall, but I live here in Cría now. I’m with the Tortallan embassy. What’s your name?”

“Daine, sir. Veralidaine Sarrasri,” she added, lifting her chin defiantly.

“And how old are you, Daine?”

“Fifteen.”

“Did you know you have a touch of horse magic?” he asked, curious.

She drew back, looking at him strangely. “No, sir, I’ve no magic. Ma — my ma had the Gift, and she tried to teach me, but I never learned. I’ve a knack with animals, that’s all.”

He decided to leave that alone for now. “You certainly do. Which reminds me, I don’t think I’ve been introduced to your friend here.” Myles nodded to the shaggy gray pony.

Daine smiled, looking relieved. “This is Cloud. She’s family, really.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cloud,” he said gravely, as the pony narrowed her eyes at him. “Well, there’s certainly room for her in my stables, if you’re interested in the job. You won’t travel as much as you would working for a horse trader, but you’ll meet some interesting people. I’ve always been very sociable by nature, and now that I’m a diplomat my job requires it, too. I would give you one silver noble a week as a stablehand, with a bonus of one gold bit at the end of the year. If you chose to leave for another job at any point, I’d write you a good reference.”

She stared at him. “That’s too much.”

“Is it?” he said mildly. “Olau is a very old noble family in Tortall, listed at the beginning of the Book of Silver. It’s possible that I’m somewhat out of touch with the wages that stablehands usually earn in this part of the world. On the other hand, you wouldn’t be an ordinary hostler. You’d be tending to the horses of some distinguished guests at my house — foreign nobility, diplomats, mages. I think you’ll be up to the challenge, if you want the job.”

She hesitated again, and then nodded vigorously. “Yessir.”

“Wonderful. Now, as it happens, I’m also in need of a new horse, and I think you’ll be a great help with that. I’m interested in this handsome fellow over here, and I’d like to know what you think of him.”

She followed him over to the dapple gray gelding, Cloud trailing after them.

**452 H.E.**

Sometimes Kel wondered why Neal, with his fondness for drama, hadn’t decided to run away and become a Player instead of trying for his knighthood. He tugged his hand through his hair, making it stick up, as he stared at her with wide eyes. “Run that by me again,” he insisted, his voice rising in pitch as he said it.

“I’m using spoken commands with Peachblossom now,” she explained. “Stefan Groomsman is teaching them to me. It’s better for him, because now I’m not dragging at the reins or kneeing his scars. That’s what all this ‘go faster’ business is about. To be honest, I like it. I feel like I’m really making progress with him.”

“And how did this come to be?” asked Neal again, too calmly.

“Stefan called in a healer to look at the horses, who mended Peachblossom’s scars and softened his mouth. Her name is Daine, and this may sound utterly mad — but she said she could talk to the horses, and it really seemed like she could. You’re acting very strange.”

Neal threw up his hands. “Don’t you _know_ who that was?”

“No,” said Kel irritably. “Why don’t you tell me instead of just mussing up your hair?”

He sighed, and then glanced toward the open door. The hallway looked empty, but she knew he was probably thinking more about listening spells. “All right,” he said, his voice very quiet. “A year or two ago, there was a mage living here who had wild magic.”

“Wild magic?” She couldn’t recall Master Emeric, who taught magical theory to the pages who lacked the Gift, mentioning anything of the kind.

“It’s different from the Gift,” he explained. “Most people up in the City of the Gods think it’s a myth, but the truth is that it’s not uncommon in small doses. What was unusual about this girl was the scope of her magic. See, usually people with wild magic have an affinity with just one kind of animal. I’ve heard Stefan has wild magic with horses, for example — that would be what keeps your Peachblossom from savaging him. But the girl you met — they called her the Wildmage, because she’s said to have an affinity for all animals, and she has more power than most. It’s said she can speak with all sorts of animals, heal them, even turn into them.”

Kel raised her eyebrows. “That last one isn’t something every mage can do, is it?”

“Not at all. Very few of them ever manage it. Of course, she’s not an ordinary mage. I’ve _never_ heard of anyone else with wild magic turning into an animal, only the strongest Gifted mages. I’m not sure even our king can do it. But the Wildmage hasn’t lived in Tortall for about a year now.”

“Why not?”

Neal glanced toward the door again. “She had some kind of falling-out with the king, I think. But if she’s back, that explains . . .”

“It explains what?” asked Kel, when his voice trailed off. He was biting his lip, and the corners of his mouth kept twitching. Sometimes she wished he didn’t talk in such a roundabout way.

“It explains the mice,” he said finally, in a slightly strangled voice. “My father told me they’ve chewed up all the king’s favorite clothes.” He cleared his throat. “Also this year’s tax records, but I like to think it’s the silk shirts the king is really upset about.”

When Kel stared at him, astonished, he took a deep breath and said, “All right, I really hope I’m not about to be overheard. You remember me telling you that my father’s the chief of the palace healers? When the royal family is sick, they call in my father. Well, a few days ago he visited the King’s Champion, because Lord Tirragen had cracked a rib fighting ogres in the Royal Forest. He’d just finished the healing when the door to Lord Tirragen’s sitting room opened, and the king walked in holding a plum velvet tunic and looking absolutely furious.”

She frowned. “This isn’t normally a matter for the King’s Champion to handle, is it?”

Neal made a noise like a muffled snort, as he fought to maintain his composure. “That’s what I said. I said to my father, ‘What did he expect him to do, fight the mice?’” He paused again to compose himself before continuing, his face flushed with suppressed laughter.

“My father said that what happened next was that Lord Tirragen turned to him and asked, very politely, whether my father might leave them alone for a few minutes. So he waited outside, where he could hear their screaming match through the door.”

“He heard the King’s Champion screaming at the king?” Kel asked, shocked. She couldn’t envision an ending to this story that didn’t involve King Roger having Lord Tirragen thrown into the dungeons, but she didn’t think Neal would be smiling if that had happened.

He nodded eagerly. “He said he’d never heard him — or anyone else — raise his voice to the king before. Apparently earlier that same day, Lord Tirragen had discovered that mice had chewed up his best saddle and tack. Well, it seems that was nothing compared to the damage they did to the king’s wardrobe — and the tax records, I suppose — so Roger didn’t know _what_ Lord Tirragen was getting so upset about. Apparently they carried on like that for about ten minutes, before the king stalked out of the room and my father went back inside to give his patient some tea, to help him sleep.”

Kel shook her head slowly. “Is he all right? The King’s Champion?”

“Oh, he’s fine, as long as he takes it easy for another week or so. Your body gets used to healings after a while, so they take longer.”

“No, I meant . . . because he’d yelled at the king. Aren’t there usually consequences for something like that?”

Neal shrugged. “Not for the King’s Champion. They’re old friends.” He smiled again. “What, were you worried he’d had him beheaded? Is that what the Yamani emperor would have done?”

“Of course.”

He was looking thoughtful. “To be honest, I think if it had been _anyone_ else raising his voice at the king . . . Well, anyway. So you met the Wildmage. What’s she like? I was up in the City of the Gods while she was in Tortall, so I’ve only heard stories.”

Kel thought back to that night in the stables, nearly a week ago now. They hadn’t talked for long, but she remembered liking Daine, especially her kindness toward Peachblossom. “She seemed nice enough. That must have been some falling-out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the dialogue here is taken from _Wild Magic_ and _First Test_.
> 
> It seems reasonable to assume, given their history and many commonalities, that Tortall and Galla have a similar currency system. Also I just didn't want to make up different names for Gallan coins.


	6. A Visitor in the Night

**449 H.E.**

With the shutters closed, her new bedroom felt like a tomb. Daine got up, slipping carefully out of bed so as not to disturb animals that weren’t there: no hedgehogs curled up beside her that night, no pine martens or voles. She crossed to the window and threw open the shutters, letting in the night air. Finally, she could breathe. The breeze carried scents from the Royal Forest to the north of Cría, and the fields and farmland to the east.

Relieved, she made her way back to bed and crawled under the covers. It was lonely there with just herself, but now she had a sense of the horses in the stable, and of all the nighttime creatures elsewhere on the grounds of Sir Myles’s townhouse. Lulled by horse dreams, she closed her eyes.

The bed was too soft. She rolled onto her side, annoyed. Would she ever get used to sleeping in a bed again?

The room Sir Myles had given her was very fine, but she couldn’t sleep there. It was upstairs, at the far end of the servants’ wing where the other hostlers slept, but it was near a back staircase leading down to a door that faced the stable. Moving quickly, Daine dressed and retrieved her bed roll from the back of her wardrobe, and then crept downstairs and outside.

Sir Myles found her early the next morning, fast asleep in the shade of an oak tree. “Daine?”

She awoke, confused at first. Where was she? She had been dreaming of a badger — but that was past, and now here was her new employer, frowning at her with concern. “Good morning, sir,” she said, her voice thick with sleep and embarrassment. “I’m sorry, sir — I couldn’t sleep.” Would he throw her out of the house, for being so odd?

There was something in her hand: a large animal’s claw, from the feel of it, or something very similar. Carefully, she laid it down in her lap, under her blanket, and sat up. She’d have a look at it later, after Sir Myles had left.

“So I gathered.” Gathering his cloak under him, Sir Myles sat down gingerly on the grass beside her, looking more relaxed now. “I myself had some trouble sleeping, so I went for an early morning walk. I’m sorry for disturbing your sleep. But Daine — I really can’t have you sleeping outside on a regular basis. You’ve heard the rumors that have been circling recently, about strange creatures attacking travelers?”

She nodded. “I didn’t see any, on the way from Snowsdale.”

“Nor have I, but I’ve spoken with some who have. There’s something to those tales, I’m afraid. And that’s not to mention the ordinary dangers of city life.” He sighed, looking past her toward the kitchen garden. “I’m not surprised you grew used to sleeping outside. Do you think that with more time, you’ll come to prefer your new room?”

She didn’t want to lie to him. Though he was a noble, and nearer to Grandda’s age than Ma’s, he treated her like someone whose opinion was worth hearing. After settling the bill for his new horse the day before, he had bought her lunch at a nearby food stall, cheerfully waving away her protestations that he didn’t need to.

“Nonsense, I have to feed my household properly,” he had said. “Think of what people would say about me if you starved, with me as round as I am.”

They had settled down to watch the crowds pass by, with him making idle commentary on the differences between life in Galla and life in Tortall, where he had lived for most of his life. After she had finished half of her meal, he had asked her, “Tell me, Daine, where do you come from?”

By that point, she had found herself trusting him in spite of herself. She had told him as much as she dared, about what the bandits had done to her family. Not about the madness, or the wolves, or the way the village had turned on her. Sir Myles had listened to her. Now, seated on the grass beside him under the lightening sky, she said, “Truth is, sir, I don’t know. I never slept upstairs at home, and animals always bunked with me. It’s harder to sleep without them.”

Sir Myles nodded, thoughtfully. “Then we shall have to come up with a different solution.”

As soon as he walked away, she had a look at the thing she’d been holding. It was a claw, or a semblance of one, made of silver that glinted in the morning light. She slipped it into her pocket; when she had a little free time later, she’d weave a thong for it, so she could wear it around her neck.

After breakfast, Daine began her morning duties under the watchful eye of Ivar, the head hostler. It wasn’t long before he nodded, looking satisfied she knew what she was doing, and left her to her own devices.

She was mucking out the stable alongside the only other hostler, a red-haired boy about her age named Dirk, when Sir Myles found her again. “I think we may have our solution,” he told her, smiling. “If you can pause for a moment, come and look at this.”

He led her over to a small, dusty storeroom, crowded with spare tack and feed and assorted odds and ends, on the other side of the stable. “If we cleared this room out and gave it a thorough cleaning, would it serve you for a bedroom?”

There was a desk in the corner, as if in some other time the room had served as someone’s office, and in the opposite wall there was a door. “I think so, sir,” she said slowly, nodding. “Where does that door lead?”

“Outside, it appears. You could leave it open in warm weather, if you like. There’s no window, I’m afraid, but we could have the carpenters fix that.”

She glanced at him, astonished that he would go to so much trouble for the likes of her.

He gazed back at her, looking quite serious. “I won’t have you, or any member of my household, sleeping in a room where they’re unable to sleep. I know that not every nobleman feels that way, but I’m inclined to think they should.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that exactly, so she nodded again. “Thank you, sir.”

He let her escape back to her duties. As they worked, moving busily from one side of the stable to the other, Dirk eyed her with suspicion. “How come you work in skirts?” he asked after a while. “The last girl wore breeches like a normal person.”

Daine looked up at him, surprised. “What do you mean, the last girl?”

“Vasha, the last girl who was a hostler here. They took me on after she took another job in Jyotis,” he explained. “My ma’s the cook, so I used to work in the kitchen, scrubbing pots.”

It wasn’t common to hire even one female hostler, let alone two. “Why’d she leave?” asked Daine. Jyotis was far to the east, near the Saren border, a long way to travel from here.

He shrugged. “She had relatives there, I think. Some visiting noble offered her a job, and off she went.”

They did things differently in eastern Galla, thought Daine, focusing her attention on the pitchfork in her hands and the mounds of soiled straw before her. She didn’t know all the details, but she’d always heard that people weren’t quite civilized out there. It was all well and good for an eastern girl like Vasha to wear men’s gear, but here in Cría people would talk.

Or would they? Cría was a city, with people from all over the Eastern Lands. You could fit dozens of Snowsdales inside Cría, if not hundreds. “I hate wearing skirts,” she confessed, after a while. “But I’ve always worn them, and people — they would talk if I started wearing men’s gear.”

Dirk gave her an odd look. “Which people? Ivar doesn’t care. He only cares if you do your work right.”

“Sir Myles might.”

He snorted. “Not him, surely. He’s friends with all kinds of people. He wouldn’t give a girl in breeches a second look. He didn’t when Vasha wore them. But suit yourself,” he added, when Daine looked skeptically at him.

That afternoon, Dirk helped her clear out the storeroom that was to be her new bedroom. When it was empty, and had been thoroughly dusted and scrubbed clean, there was space for a narrow bed, a small table, and a storage trunk. She left the door to the courtyard open that night, and slept peacefully. When she woke, she remembered only one of her dreams.

_If you look hard and long, you can find us. If you listen hard and long, you can hear any of us, call any of us, that you want._

Whom? She didn’t know. She only knew that it had been the same badger from her previous dream, the one who had given her the claw. The one who had said he knew her father . . .

Shaking her head at cryptic dream messengers, she got up and dressed. It was a fine spring day, and she knew that breakfast would be waiting for her by the time she reached the kitchen.

It wasn’t long before Daine met her first important visitor. Less than a week after she began working for Sir Myles, she was brushing his new gelding, Applesauce, when she had the sense of unfamiliar horses approaching them — perhaps four or five different horses, and at the head of them, a spirited mare who wanted nothing more than to run, but who would settle for a little gossip with Sir Myles’s horses.

“Sorry,” said Daine to Applesauce. “I’ll be right back. Visitors!” she called to Dirk, as she set down her brush and hurried outside.

“What?” he asked, following her. “I didn’t hear anything.”

The horses stood together at the front gate, where Sir Myles’s steward, Ranulf, had just met them. “You’re certainly quick today,” he murmured to Daine and Dirk, approval in his voice, before turning his full attention to the girl riding at the head of the party. She looked older than Daine by two or three years, and she wore a fine green dress and a sheer white veil pinned to her chestnut hair. Daine swallowed nervously, recognizing a noblewoman when she saw one.

“Welcome, Your Highness,” said Ranulf, bowing gracefully to the girl on horseback. “I believe Sir Myles is in the library this morning. If you’ll follow me? Your guards may be more comfortable in the kitchen, and you may give your mounts to the hostlers.”

Dirk had bowed deeply, and Daine tried to copy him, her eyes wide. If she stayed in the background, if she didn’t draw attention to herself, maybe the princess wouldn’t notice her making a fool of herself in front of royalty.

“Thank you, Ranulf,” said the princess as she dismounted. “I know it’s been too long since I’ve visited. Lately the queen has been an absolute bear about our etiquette lessons, and of course Avelina has her own lessons with Father. Please, tell Sir Myles he ought to spend more time at the palace. We miss him.”

As she spoke, her mare led her over to Daine. The mare was a pretty blue roan with a white star, who began nuzzling Daine’s pockets in search of something to eat. Daine ran her hand over the mare’s mane, delighted in spite of her fear of royalty. “Oh, you beauty.”

The princess laughed, as her horse narrowed her focus to the pocket where Daine usually kept sugar and bits of apple. “She’s caught you out, I’m afraid. You’ll have to give her a treat now. You’re new, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“Daine, Your Highness,” she said quietly, as she gave the mare a lump of sugar. It was easier to talk if she kept her eyes on the horses. “I can take her now, if you like.” The mare’s name, she knew without having to be told, was Lilac.

The princess handed her the reins, and for an instant she feared she might drop them. “How long have you been with Sir Myles?”

“Five days, Your Highness.”

“Oh, you’ll like him. He’s quite a dear. Just like an uncle to us.” And then she was gone, leaving Daine holding the reins of her horse.

“That was Celine,” Dirk informed her, after they’d collected the reins of the other horses and led them over to the stable. Daine understood now why there were so many empty stalls; they stood waiting for moments like this. “The king’s second daughter. Sir Myles tutors the princesses in history.”

Daine nodded, trying to recall what she knew about the royal family. King Matrurin had three daughters by his first wife and two more by his second, unless it was the other way round. She was fairly certain that Avelina was the eldest, and next in line for the throne after the king’s brother, who was said to be in poor health. If he died before the king, unless Queen Josiane gave birth to a son, Avelina would inherit the throne. Recalling what Celine had said about her sister’s lessons, Daine realized that the king was already training her for that possibility, and shook her head wonderingly. A woman hadn’t held the throne in Galla in her own right for over a hundred years.

And here she was, a country girl from Snowsdale, left in charge of a princess’s horse. “Have you met any of her sisters?” she asked him.

Dirk nodded. “Not the oldest or the youngest, but the other ones — Felicie and Liliane. They visited with Celine once, and they all had tea with Sir Myles.”

He was blushing suddenly, and Daine tried to guess which princess he had fallen in love with. Probably Felicie, whom she seemed to recall was around their age.

Celine’s horse, Lilac, had taken a liking to her. In the stable, Daine brushed her down, finally beginning to relax. Royal horses were the same as ordinary horses; so long as she only had to deal with them, she would be fine.

She began to grow used to visitors. None of the princesses returned over the course of the next fortnight, but twice she was asked to ready Sir Myles’s horse for a visit to the palace. On Monday, a small delegation of mages arrived from the City of the Gods in Tortall, and she looked after their horses. Mages were all right; they didn’t spook her the way that royalty did, so Daine was able to go about her work without worrying too much about them.

After supper, which Sir Myles ate with the entire household, she was largely left to her own devices. About two weeks after her arrival in Cría, she was seated on the fence encircling the small pasture behind the stable, watching the horses graze before she had to bring them in for the night, when she realized she had settled into her new life.

A squirrel had climbed the fencepost to join her, and struck up a conversation. She offered him some of the nuts she’d started keeping in her pockets, knowing that spring was a hard season for squirrels, and listened while he told her about all the nuts he had buried last fall that had already begun to sprout. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “What about mushrooms? There are some under that line of trees behind the pasture.”

It was a fine evening, clear-skied after an early afternoon rainstorm, with the brilliance of sunset still fading into dusk. Absorbed in her conversation, she didn’t realize there was anyone nearby until the squirrel chattered a farewell and scurried away. Daine looked up, and saw Sir Myles approaching the pasture.

He wore comfortable shoes, and a woolen cloak to keep off the evening chill. “I hope I didn’t startle you,” he said, nodding toward the departing squirrel. “He seemed to have a great deal to say to you.”

“I brought him some nuts,” she explained. “They have a harder time finding food in spring. Did you want me for something, sir?”

“Oh no, I was just going for a walk around the grounds.” He stood there for a while beside the fence, watching the horses in the gathering darkness. “Dumpling seems happy out there.”

“Oh, she is, sir. She loves spring.”

He was silent for a long moment. “You really do have a knack with them, don’t you?” he said at last, after she’d begun to think he might bid her good night and move on. “You know, when we first met, you reminded me of someone I knew back in Tortall — a hostler in the palace stables. He had an uncanny way with horses.”

She tensed, wary. Was he going to start talking of magic again, after she’d already told him she had none?

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Daine,” he said, frowning. “I fear that I have, with my talk of horse magic. You were tested for the Gift, weren’t you?”

She nodded. “Over and over,” she heard herself saying, when she hadn’t meant to speak at all. “As if Ma thought I’d grow some Gift when she wasn’t looking, but I _never_ did. I couldn’t even light a fire, and babies can do that. I would’ve grabbed at some magic if I could, just to please her.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from saying more. She hadn’t meant to speak of her mother in anger, really she hadn’t. But there was too much anger mixed up in her grief, anger at the bandits and the villagers, that some of it had spilled out.

Sir Myles hesitated, as if trying to choose his words carefully. “I’m so sorry you were treated that way, Daine. I never meant to upset you. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t ever talking of the Gift.”

She frowned, puzzled by that. “Then what?”

“There’s said to be magic out there that isn’t the Gift,” he explained, his voice gentle, “but rather something else entirely. There are people who seem to have a connection with certain animals, a closer bond with them than most people have. But that’s not really important, because there’s value that lies outside of magic — whether we’re talking of the Gift, or horse magic, or hound magic. _I_ don’t have any magic at all, and I’d like to think I have some value.”

He said these last words so sincerely that Daine felt herself smiling, her anger fading, and then he smiled as well, as if glad to see that his joke had landed. “I wouldn’t disagree, sir.”

“I’d feel very sad if you did,” he replied. “I won’t bring up magic again, Daine. But if you ever want to talk about it, or anything else at all, you know where to find me.”

Just over a fortnight later, Daine awoke in the middle of the night. There was an unfamiliar horse nearby, standing just outside the front gate and waiting for it to open.

There was grass beyond the gate, he knew, and a place to rest at the end of his long journey. Daine listened, trying to figure out where he had come from. South? Yes, from the mountains that lay between Tusaine and Cría. He had met the man who was riding him now at an inn near the Tusaine border, where the man had exchanged horses, and both of them were very tired now. Daine slid out of bed, taking care not to disturb a pair of slumbering rabbits, and dressed hurriedly.

Outside, the moon was full, lighting her path as she made her way to the front courtyard. The sky was clear but for a few wisps of cloud in the eastern sky, and a strong breeze pushed away the city smells, carrying in the scent of the fields beyond, of rich earth and growing things.

A light was burning in the little guardhouse by the gate. She knocked on the door, and waited for the guard on duty to answer it. After a moment, she heard footsteps, and then the door swung open. “Yes? You have a message for me?”

Daine shook her head. “Excuse me, sir, but there’s someone outside.”

The guard gaped at her. “I didn’t hear anyone. You must be a mage.”

“I’m not a mage,” she said, trying to tamp down her annoyance. “I heard a horse, that’s all.”

There came a soft knock at the gate. Raising his eyebrows at her, the guard went to see who was there. Daine followed, curious.

Standing just beyond the gate, holding the reins of his horse, was one of the tallest men Daine had ever seen. He wore a dark cloak with the hood raised, hiding his face from view. “Excuse me,” he said quietly, “could you tell me whether Myles of Olau is in residence? He should have had a letter by now, telling him to expect me at some point.”

“And who might you be?” asked the guard.

“Arram Draper,” replied the stranger.

The name meant nothing to Daine, but that didn’t surprise her. She rarely knew who guests were when they first arrived. “Run and fetch Ranulf,” said the guard to her, and she obeyed. Whatever was going on here, Sir Myles’s steward would know.

One of the footmen slept on a pallet just inside the door, to greet any nighttime visitors like this one. She roused him, and asked him to wake Ranulf. “Sorry,” she whispered, as he wiped sleep from his eyes. “I know it’s late.”

She only had to wait ten minutes before the steward descended the main staircase, dressed as if to start his day. He looked more awake than she felt; perhaps he didn’t sleep. “What name did the man give?” he asked, as he followed Daine outside.

She told him.

“Did he mention a second name?”

“Nossir.”

The man and his horse were still waiting outside the gate when she got back. She stood behind the guard, clasping her hands behind her back. The horse wanted to go to her; her hands itched to take his reins, to lead him back to the stables, brush him down, and give him some feed.

“We’ve been expecting you, Master Draper,” said the steward, approaching the gate. “But you understand that we must exercise some caution, under the circumstances. Can you tell me more about how you came to be here?”

“I understand,” replied the stranger. “Your master is a friend of one of my former teachers at the university, Lindhall Reed. He told me that if I ever needed sanctuary, I could go to Sir Myles in Cría. It’s been a very long journey.”

“Indeed,” said Ranulf. “You came through Tusaine? Raise the gate, Gilles.”

There was a low rumble, and the gate began to rise. “I traveled for a few years with a group of Players,” said Arram Draper, sounding more relaxed now. “I joined up with them in Berat, and we traveled through Maren and Tusaine. But in Tusaine, I happened to meet someone who had known me in Carthak, and I thought it better to continue north.”

“How unfortunate. Were you recognized?”

“I don’t think so. We passed each other by chance on the street in Ashford, and he didn’t give me a second glance. But it spooked me, all the same.”

“Of course,” said Ranulf, appearing to understand Draper perfectly. “We’re having a room made up for you now. Please, follow me. Daine here will take charge of your mount.”

Until that moment, they had been speaking in some sort of strange code, and Daine was glad to leave them to it. She took the reins that Draper handed her, flashing the stranger a polite smile. His horse was a black gelding, sore and sweat-soaked, and thoroughly tired of being ridden by a man who didn’t know the first thing about riding a horse.

“You poor thing,” she said to him, running her hand over his mane. “You come with me.”

Leaving Ranulf to deal with Draper, she led the horse away, into the shadows that lay between the front gate and the stable, toward warmth and comfort and a place to rest.

**439 H.E.**

After her conversation with Thayet, in which the princess had asked to join them, Alanna’s dawn fighting lessons became a group affair. All of the children joined them — not merely the youngest girl, Nisa, who had been so eager to learn Shang fighting — along with Thayet and Buri. For the most part, Buri took charge of the children, teaching them K’miri-style hand-to-hand fighting. Alanna watched, shaking her head with wonder, as the older girls grimly pushed through their warmup exercises, working to become as strong and graceful as Buri.

“I’ve never seen girls so eager to fight before,” she confessed to Thayet one morning over breakfast, not long after they started practicing together.

Buri had overheard her. “Don’t commoner girls learn how to defend themselves where you’re from?”

Alanna wasn’t entirely sure. Until recently, she had spent most of her time around young noblemen. “Some do, I think. From where I’m from, mountain girls learn to use slings to keep the wolves at bay.” At the Court of the Rogue, most women knew how to use knives, but she suspected that wasn’t common in other parts of Tortall.

“Lowlander girls aren’t encouraged to learn much here,” said Thayet, a note of bitterness in her voice. “A sling at most, like your mountain girls. But in wartime, social norms break down.”

Whatever strange understanding had passed between them a few days earlier, with Thayet’s fireside kiss, did not fade away with time. Later that day, after they stopped to rest at the height of the day’s heat, Alanna woke from a nap in the shade to find she had company besides her cat. Thayet knelt beside her, trying to drape something around her neck without waking her.

Alanna sat up, confused, and looked down at the thing that was scratching her lightly on the chin. It was a long, loosely braided chain of wildflowers. Sitting up caused it to fall into place, hanging down over her coat of mail almost to her navel. “What’s this?”

“The girls taught me how to make those,” Thayet explained, her hazel eyes dancing with mirth. “It suits you.”

“It most certainly does not.”

“It does! You look like a knight in a fairy story. Here,” she said, lifting the chain from Alanna’s shoulders. She wound it together three times, making a smaller circle, and set it on top of Alanna’s head. “Now it’s a crown.”

Surprised, Alanna started to laugh. “Have you always been this silly?” Thayet was usually so serious, so intent on getting them all to Rachia as soon as she could.

“No,” said Thayet, her smile fading. “Not always.” She adjusted the crown, which had slipped down over Alanna’s eyes, and then left to go tend to the baby, who had begun to wail.

Idly stroking Faithful, who lay curled up beside her, Alanna watched her walk away with her head held high. She certainly had regal bearing, but sometimes Alanna couldn’t make heads or tails of her. “Maybe the stress is getting to her,” she murmured. “Do you think I hurt her feelings?”

 _Is_ that _what you think is going on?_ said Faithful sleepily. _Stress? As to your question, I believe she merely remembered the gravity of the moment._

Alanna glanced suspiciously down at her cat. “You sound like you have other ideas. Pray, share them.”

Faithful gazed unblinkingly up at her, and then appeared to go back to sleep. _No, I think not. I’ve always preferred to let you figure such things out on your own._

She shook her head. “Useless creature.”

One night while Alanna was on watch, she heard the distant sound of an advancing army. She listened carefully, tense, but the army only passed by the abandoned farmstead where they’d settled down for the night, and moved on into silence. Aside from that night, they reached the outskirts of Rachia without incident.

“You should rub some dirt on that pretty face,” Eda said to Thayet, when they stopped for a rest a few miles from the city walls. “Buri, switch clothes with her.”

Buri looked appalled at the idea. “They wouldn’t fit. She’s nearly half a head taller than me, and she looks too much like a lowlander.”

Thayet sighed. “I understand your intent, Eda, but she has a point. Besides, if I’m recognized, Buri will need to fight. She’ll want her own clothes for that.”

Alanna looked them over thoughtfully. It was what Thayet’s enemies might expect, too, if they expected a disguise at all. They would guess that Buri was with her. Grimly, she removed her mail, feeling uncomfortably exposed without it. Thayet looked over at her, startled.

“I’m shorter than Thayet, too,” Alanna explained, “but she’s leaner than I am, and my gambeson and mail are long enough. They should fit her. And I have a pair of spare breeches in one of my saddlebags. She can wear my clothes.”

Eda smiled. “Good idea. Give her your helm to cover her face.”

Alanna kept close to Thayet as they made their way through the streets of Rachia. Bow in hand, still feeling naked without her armor, she scanned the rooftops and the crowds. They made it to the convent without a fight.

“Gods, this is _heavy_ ,” Thayet murmured, as they waited in the visitors’ court of the convent. Until that moment, she had borne the chainmail without so much as a grimace. She removed Alanna’s helm and pushed loose, sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes.

Something was wrong. The longer they waited there, watched over by the convent’s doorwarden, the clearer that became. Under normal circumstances, one of the other priestesses would have led them to a temple guest house within minutes of their arrival.

“I don’t like this,” said Buri, giving voice to everyone’s thoughts. She glared after a pair of priestesses who had ventured into the courtyard to stare at them and then retreated back into the safety of the convent proper. “I should teach those lowland hens some manners. Surely the First Daughter _knows_ Thayet is here by now. Is this how they treat a princess?”

“Hush,” said Eda absently, her attention on an approaching Daughter of the Goddess.

The priestess was a young woman, who wore the undyed robes of a novice. “Have you come to take us to see the First Daughter, girl?” Eda said to her, pitching her voice to be heard over the noise from the street. “As I told your doorwarden, I am Eda Bell, the Shang Wildcat, and these are my companions — among them Princess Thayet _jian_ Wilima, Duchess of Camau and Thanhyien. We’ve been on the road for weeks, and we’re half dead on our feet. We beg an audience with the First Daughter of this temple.”

Her eyes wide, the novice nodded and hurried away. Within minutes she returned, to lead Eda and her companions to a guest house behind the convent’s inner wall. As Thayet struggled out of the chainmail shirt, servants arrived to look after the children and horses.

From there, the novice led them to a room that opened onto the long courtyard between their guest house and the inner sanctuary. From somewhere nearby, Alanna could hear the sound of water splashing into the basin of a fountain; she felt a prickle of foreboding over her back. At the long table facing the veranda, two Daughters of the Goddess sat, waiting for them.

One of them wore a cloth-of-gold habit, marking her as the First Daughter of a wealthy convent. She made a poor attempt at a smile as they settled down before her, sitting with their backs to the courtyard. Alanna fought the urge to keep glancing over her shoulder.

“I am First Daughter _jian_ Cadao,” she said, avoiding Thayet’s eyes. “Princess — Lady Thayet, we were . . . unprepared for your arrival. Please, forgive us our inhospitality. We would like to extend every courtesy . . .”

“There are problems,” said the other priestess, who wore a black habit, signifying her dedication to the Goddess in her role as the Hag, the queen of the underworld. The Hag Daughter was young, not much older than Alanna herself, but she spoke with authority, like someone who was used to speaking for the convent. “Forgive my bluntness,” she said to Buri, who was looking mutinous. “I never learned to soften my words. Princess, your father is dead. May the Black God ease his passing.”

Thayet grew pale. “How? When?”

“A sudden illness. We suspect poison, of course, but no one is anxious to prove it.” She hesitated, before saying more quietly, “I don’t mean to upset you. We were told that you and your father were no longer on speaking terms.”

“We aren’t,” said Thayet quietly, but she still looked dismayed.

“Try to understand the position we’re in,” the Hag Daughter went on. “If you remain here, it’s only a matter of time before _zhir_ Anduo finds out. He’s been very open about his desire to speak with you.”

“Kill her, ye mean,” muttered Coram.

The Hag Daughter frowned at him, her eyes cold. “Not under our roof. No priestess here would betray the princess; they know the cost. This place is a holy sanctuary.” She glanced at the First Daughter again, who looked away, before returning her attention to Thayet. “But news has a way of getting out, as I’m sure you know. We cannot guarantee your safety if you remain here for very long.”

“I understand,” said Thayet quietly.

“The children are welcome, of course,” said the First Daughter. “Except . . . except for your personal guard, Lady Thayet. She is K’mir and closely linked to you.” She avoided Buri’s contemptuous stare. “But we will foster the students from the Mother of Mountains, until we can safely return them to their families. We understand the infant has been orphaned; we will rear him here. But we dare not shelter the rest of you. We will give you clothing, horses, whatever you need — but you must leave tomorrow, before dawn.”

When they returned to the guest house, they found new saddlebags waiting for them, already neatly packed. As though in a trance, Thayet crossed to the mirror in one of the bedrooms and began to remove the pins from her hair, undoing the remains of the braid she’d wound around her head like a crown.

“They don’t waste time, do they?” said Buri, sneering down at the saddlebags.

Watching Thayet brush her long hair, Alanna knelt on the floor beside Faithful. She scratched behind his ears, tried to coax some of the mud out of his fur with her fingers. “Where will you go?” she asked the princess.

Thayet shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t expect the rest of my family to treat me any better than _jian_ Cadao.”

“I didn’t much like her,” Coram grumbled.

“Don’t be so hard on her. The Hag Daughter wasn’t wrong — my presence puts them in a difficult position. It would be easier for all of my family if I’d died on the road.” She swallowed, turning away from them. “Any power I had was through my father. Now that he’s dead, I’m just a pawn. In truth, I was lucky here. The next relative I turn to may choose to keep me as a hostage instead.”

Alanna gazed thoughtfully at the Shang Wildcat, who leaned against the wall near the door. She had seen far more of the world than any of them. “Eda, what lies east of Sarain? I know we’re not far from the Roof of the World, and beyond that there’s Jindazhen, but — what else?”

“Oh, quite a lot. Southeast of here, you’ll find Port Udayapur and the surrounding countryside. That’s worth visiting, I’d say. You’ll find other cities like it further east, along the road to Jindazhen: traders’ oases ruled by powerful lords. Beyond that lies Jindazhen and her neighbors, and all of the island nations between here and the western shores of Tortall. You could travel for many lifetimes before you ran out of things to see.”

“What’s the terrain like, on the other side of the Roof of the World?”

“Once you get clear of the foothills, there’s a vast desert, with grassy steppes to the north. River valleys here and there, and another mountain range along the southern coast after a while.”

Thayet had turned back to them, listening intently. There was a wistful look in her eyes. “I’d thought of heading west, maybe,” she said quietly. “But I’ve only ever seen the Roof of the World from a distance. I wouldn’t mind seeing it up close.”

The tallest mountains in the world, thought Alanna with a shiver of awe, trying to imagine them as something more than just a hazy purple line against the horizon. Surely she’d be safe on the other side; she doubted Roger would be looking for her in Jindazhen. “Let’s go east,” she said, the words escaping her mouth before she’d finished thinking them through.

Buri glanced at her, eyebrows raised.

“Why not? We’re only a few days’ ride from the M’kon River. It’s the quickest way out of Sarain.”

“That’s true,” said Thayet slowly. “You’d come with us?”

“Of course,” said Alanna, looking to Coram for assurance. He nodded, smiling at her. “Where else am I going to go?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue in the last scene is taken from _Lioness Rampant_ ; the badger god's line and a couple of Daine's lines are from _Wild Magic_.
> 
> Today was the day I learned that "stable" isn't automatically a plural noun.


	7. The Menagerie

**449 H.E.**

Over the next few days, Daine learned by way of household gossip that their new visitor was a mage from the university in Carthak, and that he was going by a different name than the one he’d given to the guard at the gate. That he was on the run from something was clear, but nobody seemed to know what. Over breakfast the next morning, one of the kitchen maids told Daine that she’d heard that Arram Draper had killed another mage in a duel.

“Him?” said Daine, skeptical. Though she bore a slight grudge toward the mage, after hearing from his horse how badly he rode, she couldn’t picture him murdering anyone.

The maid shrugged. “That’s what I heard.”

That afternoon, Sir Myles was scheduled to visit the palace. Daine was checking his gelding’s tack when she thought she heard him approaching, and glanced up.

To her surprise, it was the mage. He was holding an apple in one large hand and looking rather guiltily at her. “I hope I’m not intruding,” he said. “Daine, is it? I only came to offer this as an apology.” Crossing to the opposite stall, he held out the apple for the horse he had ridden north into Cría.

She was shocked he’d remembered her name. “An apology, Master Draper?”

“I know I’m not the best of riders. I think this poor fellow hates me.”

Daine looked down, biting her lip.

“I should probably tell you that I’m no longer Master Draper. That was my boyhood name, but these days I go by Numair Salmalín.”

“I _wondered_ why everyone was calling you that,” she confessed.

He smiled ruefully. “Is everyone talking about me, then?”

“Not quite everyone,” she said.

Sir Myles, for one, had been frustratingly silent on the subject of the visiting mage. According to household gossip, he had spent the entire morning cloistered in his office, working on some project or another. He had eaten his breakfast in there, and said nothing of Numair Salmalín to the footman who had brought the tray up to him, much to the servants’ disappointment. The steward, Ranulf, had only reminded them all to mind their tongues, after overhearing a pair of housemaids speculating about why the mage had left Carthak.

The mage still looked vaguely worried, so she tried to cheer him up. “Don’t worry, sir. The next time one of the princesses visits, everyone will be talking about her instead.”

He smiled. “That’s good to hear. I promise, I’m really not very interesting. Mind you, some of the rumors are true. I _do_ know how to juggle.”

“Is that what you were doing with the troupe of Players?” asked Daine.

“Ah, you remember that. Yes, I juggled and did some minor illusion magic. I started out scrubbing pots in a tavern in Maren, after crossing the Inland Sea, but I wasn’t very good at it. So I decided to start using one of the few practical skills I’d learned in school.”

“Juggling?” she said, hesitantly.

“Exactly. Most of what I studied at the university was very esoteric,” he explained, in answer to her confused frown. “Fortunately I had juggling to fall back on.”

She shook her head slowly, astounded by that.

“Now, I’ve learned more practical magic since then, fortunately. Wherever I traveled with the Players, I sought out local hedgewitches and asked to study with them.”

She hid a smile. So this was the value of a fancy university education. Then something else occurred to her. “When did you leave Carthak, sir? If you don’t mind me asking.” There had been some debate among the servants about that, revolving mainly around the mage’s accent and a letter of introduction Sir Myles was said to have received recently.

He smiled, a little sheepishly. “I’ve been here — oh, going on about six or seven years now. I’m afraid I simplified things when I first arrived, the other night. Sir Myles and Lindhall Reed have discussed me in a few letters over the years, not just the one.”

That puzzled her. “Why not go to Sir Myles sooner?”

He looked thoughtful at that. “I did consider it. I had a few bad years in there, along the way. But I was reluctant to attract attention to myself, with how closely placed Myles is to both the king of Galla and the king of Tortall.” Then he brightened, and reached into his breeches pocket, drawing out a few small, brightly colored balls. “Here, let me prove my story to you.”

She watched, charmed, as he began to juggle, rhythmically tossing each ball into the air until he had five of them moving in a continuous circle about his head. After a few minutes he caught them, one by one, and took a bow while she applauded.

“It’s a kind of magic of its own,” he said, smiling. “Well, I suppose I’d better let you get back to work now.”

After that, Daine forgave him. He was really very nice, and perhaps he couldn’t help being such a bad rider.

The next time she spoke to him was after dinner the next evening, after nearly tripping over him.

Numair Salmalín sat cross-legged on the grass outside of the kitchen, in the gathering dusk. She would have thought he’d been watching the sunset, except that his eyes were closed. He opened one eye at the sound of her boots on the path; she had stopped abruptly just a foot away from him.

“Sorry, sir,” she mumbled, backing away. “I didn’t see you there.”

“My fault, probably,” he said, opening his other eye and rolling out his neck, as though it had cramped up. She wondered how long he had been there. “I may have chosen too public a spot.”

“What were you doing?” she asked, curious.

“Meditating,” he replied.

“Is that something mages do?” Ma had never meditated, as far as she could remember.

“Yes, but it’s not strictly for mages. It clears the mind, and helps it to rest.” He studied her face for a moment, gazing up at her in the dim light as though he could see into the furthest reaches of her mind. “Would you like to learn?”

“Me?” she said, startled, and then gave the question some thought. “Is it hard to learn?”

“You won’t know until you try,” he replied cheerfully. “Here, have a seat. Sir Myles does it from time to time, you know,” he continued, as she cautiously sat down on the grass beside him. “He says it helps him get a grip on his thoughts when he’s writing. He’s working on a book, you know. A history of the Eastern Lands.”

Sir Myles had mentioned that once, during a visit to the stables. “Something to do while he’s in Galla,” she quoted, remembering the way he had described it to her.

Numair Salmalín smiled at her, as if delighted to find someone who could follow his train of thought. “As though he doesn’t do enough already. Now, meditation. We’ll start small. Sit up straight, with your hands on your knees. Close your eyes and breathe slowly, in and out. Let your thoughts empty out. For now, that’s enough.”

She closed her eyes, listening to the night. From the kitchen behind them came the sounds of people washing up after dinner, but that seemed to fade after a moment. Here came a western breeze, clean air to push away the city smells; here came a flurry of bats that had just woken up. She smiled, listening to them begin their nightly hunt.

From the pasture, she could hear the horses grazing, and the smaller animals moving through the grass: mice, voles, marmots. From one of the trees that ran along the edge of Sir Myles’s property, an owl took flight. She hoped that the bats would manage to stay out of his way.

“That’s enough for tonight, I think,” said Numair, startling her. She opened her eyes, and found that he was watching her, his expression unreadable in the darkness.

“I’d better go bring the horses in,” she said, getting to her feet. Her legs had started to cramp up — how long had she been sitting there with her eyes closed? However meditating was supposed to work, she felt sure she’d done it wrong, in front of some fancy university mage. She turned away, her face hot with embarrassment.

“You did very well, Daine.”

She turned back to him, surprised. “Thank you, sir.”

The Stormwings descended on them two weeks after Numair Salmalín arrived, a few hours after dawn. It was a damp, gray morning, with a sky full of heavy clouds but no rain yet. There was a sour tinge to the air, an uneasy feeling that reminded Daine of the day the rabid bear had killed the village blacksmith. “Something’s wrong,” she said to Ivar, the head hostler, as she began her morning duties.

“Storm?” he said. “Looks like rain out there.”

Shaking her head, she told him about the last time she’d felt this sick, sour feeling in the air, and watched his eyebrows ascend.

“A rabid _bear_?”

“I’m getting my longbow,” she told him and Dirk. “Just to be on the safe side.”

As she and Dirk led the horses outside to graze in the pasture, the hair on her arms began to stand on end. There were no birds in the trees, no mice or squirrels going about their daily deeds in the long grass. She didn’t even see flies hovering about, bothering the horses. “Don’t you feel it?” she whispered to Dirk, who shook his head. It was too unnaturally quiet out to speak at a normal volume.

Moments later, a shriek broke the stillness, like metal grating on metal. Another followed, as eight immense birds burst out of the line of trees at the edge of the property, their wings glinting silver in the dim light. The horses began to scream, panicked.

They weren’t birds, Daine realized, as she went through the familiar motions of bending her bow against her boot and stringing it. She felt numb, gazing in horror at the creatures as she set an arrow to her bowstring and waited for them to get within range. Beside her, Dirk had frozen in place, his mouth hanging open.

“What in the realm of Chaos _are_ those?”

That was Ivar’s voice. She darted a glance in his direction, and saw him emerging from the stables with a crossbow in his hands.

A wave of stench, worse than anything Daine had smelled before, rolled in ahead of the creatures. They were caked in filth, she saw as they halted just out of range, hovering over the pasture. One of them wore a crown of black glass, on a head that was human but for razor-sharp teeth covered with something dark, like old blood. The creature smiled at Daine, showing her teeth.

“What are you planning on doing with that, girlie? Shooting me? That’s not very noble of you. We have no quarrel with _you_ , after all. We’re only looking for a mage.”

Daine gritted her teeth, feeling the bile rising in her throat, and kept her arrow trained on the creature.

“Perhaps you’ve seen him? Black hair, brown skin, unusually tall for one of your kind.”

From behind her, someone loosed an arrow. As it fell short of its target, Daine chanced another glance behind her: the Olau men-at-arms had arrived. Behind them, she could see Sir Myles and Numair Salmalín approaching, grim-faced.

“Ah, there he is,” said the creature, and swooped down, her talons extended toward the mage.

Daine took aim and loosed her arrow, hitting the creature in the eye as she descended. The rest of the flock had followed her. Inar’s crossbow bolt caught one of them in the throat; he dropped to the grass, where the horses were waiting to trample him.

A cloud of sparrows exploded out of the trees and rushed the metal creatures, blinding and pecking at them. When one of the creatures managed to break free of them, black lightning laced with silver encircled her, consuming her like fire.

Within a few minutes, only the glass-crowned creature remained, the rest of them having been taken out by arrows or magic. “How _dare_ you,” she snarled, her too-human face a mask of fury. Blood oozed from her ruined eye.

“What were you planning on doing with me after you’d caught me?” asked Numair, raising his eyebrows slightly. “Were you going to rip me apart, or did Ozorne ask you to deliver me to him in one piece?”

She shrieked again and dropped, talons glinting in the light. Daine gritted her teeth, aimed, and shot her in the throat.

“Stormwings?” said Sir Myles quietly, in the silence that followed. He approached the glass-crowned creature’s body, wearing an expression of horrified fascination, and had to cover his nose to get close. “These haven’t been seen in the Eastern Lands for over four hundred years.”

“I’m sorry,” said Numair, his voice hushed. “I’ve brought trouble down on your house. Maybe I should go.”

“Go? Nonsense. It’s not safe out there, with these things flying about. You’ll stay for as long as you want.” He paused. “I do wonder how they found you, precisely. I’ll have to look into that.”

Daine barely heard their conversation. She hurried over the grass, unharmed herself but feeling battered and torn, to where the sparrows lay dying. Tears on her face, she dropped to her knees and reached for a bird that lay bleeding before her, one of its wings in tatters. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her head pounding as she cradled the sparrow in her hands. “You should’ve stayed hid.”

Her ears began to roar, like the sound of heavy rain, and her vision went dark.

The next thing she was aware of was the second-worst thing she’d ever smelled in her life, after the Stormwings. She rolled over, gasping for breath, suddenly conscious that she was lying on her side in the pasture under a gray sky. “Ugh, what _is_ that?”

“Wakeflower,” replied Numair, who sat beside her. “I’m sorry,” he added, with a rueful smile, as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. “You must be exhausted. I don’t blame you.”

She nodded. Her whole body was one big, dull ache, though the pain she’d felt just before she’d fainted was gone. She looked around, puzzled by something. “Master Salmalín, where are the birds?”

“Ah, that. You healed them, and they flew away.”

She stared at him. “What? But I don’t have — I’m not a _mage_. I was tested for the Gift, and I don’t have any.” If this was a joke, it was a cruel one. All her life, she had tried to heal her friends, with bandages and splints and stitches, but she had never been able to do for them what Ma could for her patients.

“So I’ve been told,” said Numair gently. “Nonetheless, you healed the birds. I watched you do it.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

“Daine, I can _see_ magic. Believe me, this was you. With proper training, I think you can learn how to heal without fainting. They pulled it out of you this time, I think,” he added, when she didn’t try to argue again, “but that kind of magic isn’t sustainable. You’ll need to learn proper control.”

She continued to shake her head slowly, dazed, and then realized something. “You knew,” she accused him. “You already knew about me being tested for the Gift. Sir Myles told you.”

“He did,” said Numair, his expression growing more serious. “He told me that magic was a difficult subject for you. But under the circumstances, I’m afraid we have to discuss it.”

“He said I have horse magic,” she whispered.

“Yes, that’s what he thought at the time. That’s what he was familiar with. But I believe your magic is more expansive than that.”

Certain he had her attention now, he tried a smile. She could only stare at him. “How do you know?”

“Oh, I’m the world’s leading expert in wild magic.”

Startled by the casual arrogance of that remark, she snorted. “Well, excuse _me_.”

He laughed, and then grew more serious again. “Would you like to learn how to heal animals?”

She nodded eagerly, not trusting herself to be able to speak.

“You could use something to eat, I’d wager,” said Numair. “Water, too. I’m sorry, I should have thought of that earlier. I get so distracted sometimes. Follow me to the kitchen, and we can talk there.”

**450 H.E.**

Alex lounged beside the fire, toying idly with his belt knife and trying to stifle a yawn as the conversation receded into silence. “Do you suppose we’ll see any winged horses?” he asked, after another minute of listening to the flames crackle. He sank a little lower in his chair, his head nestled in the corner where the back cushion met the armrest, his legs draped over the opposite armrest, the way Roger had always hated.

“I thought you’d had your fill of hurroks,” said Roger, a note of amusement in his voice, from the desk in the corner, where he sat half-concealed by a mountain of paperwork.

“I meant the other kind.”

“You would think so. I’ve heard tell of winged horses having been sighted in Sarain.” His voice grew a little quieter, a little colder. “It is curious, isn’t it, how we alone have been so beset by monsters.”

He drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the desk, gazing down at the report before him. “I’ve asked Thom to figure out how to send them back, of course, but that’s useless if we don’t know how they got here in the first place.”

“Poor Thom,” said Alex, raising his eyebrows. It had taken Roger such a long time to learn how to delegate important tasks, and he still had trouble relinquishing control to more than a few moderately trusted souls.

“Yes, I’m afraid he lost his temper with me a bit yesterday.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose slightly higher. “What did he say?”

“That he’s only one man, and that a team of mages had locked them away in the Divine Realms in the first place, and surely it must have taken a team of mages to set them loose again.”

“What did _you_ say?”

Roger was silent for a long moment, avoiding Alex’s eyes. “That he had a point.”

Alex let out a low whistle.

“Oh, come off it, I’m not _that_ much of a tyrant.”

There came a knock at the door. Alex glanced up, curious. “Come in,” called Roger, and the door to the staircase swung open, admitting Yves of Sandhill.

The spymaster bowed obsequiously. “Your Majesty. Lord Alexander,” he added, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Alex suppressed the urge to groan audibly. He had been on the verge of bidding Roger good night and heading back to his rooms, but he couldn’t miss this, whatever it was.

“Come in and shut the door,” said Roger, not looking up from his reports. “And have a seat. You can speak in front of Alex — whatever you tell him won’t leave this room.” 

“Very well, Your Majesty,” said Yves, though he clearly wasn’t happy about the situation. He took the chair nearest the desk, perching awkwardly on the edge of it as though afraid of looking too comfortable around the king.

“We’ve identified a nobleman who has been plotting rebellion,” he began. “Armel of Sinthya. We have reason to believe he’s in league with Carthak.”

Roger glanced up, as a smile spread slowly over Alex’s face. “Sinthya?” said Roger with a hint of amusement in his voice. “I thought he hated foreigners.”

“Evidently he’s learned how to work with them,” said Yves with a straight face. “He appears to be in league with immortals as well, which points to the Carthaki connection we suspected.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Roger, a little wearily. “The mages who sealed the Divine Realms were based out of the University of Carthak, so it stands to reason someone there could have found those spells.”

He was probably wishing _he’d_ found them, thought Alex, when he had lived in Carthak two decades ago.

Roger glanced at him. “Alex, would you like to be the one to arrest Lord Sinthya?”

Alex smiled. He’d never liked Sinthya. “Please.”

“Good. I’ll see to it the army rides out first thing tomorrow. What else?” he asked, returning his attention to Yves.

The spymaster cleared his throat. “To move on, my agents in Sarain tell me that the new warlord is expecting his third child. Another boy, according to the midwives.”

“Still no sign of Lord Adigun’s daughter, is there?”

Yves shook his head. “No trace of her after she left the convent in Rachia.”

“Hm,” said Roger. “It’s probably safe to assume she died during the civil war. Still, let’s keep an eye out for her. If there’s another war in Sarain, I want to know about it before it starts. Now, is there anything interesting happening in Galla?”

Alex watched, fascinated, as Yves’s expression changed. A muscle near his mouth twitched; he glanced down, frowning slightly, and then met Roger’s eyes again. “My agents in Cría have begun sending me some curious reports, sire.”

“Go on,” said Roger, his eyes narrowing.

“They tell me there’s a girl at court there — a commoner child — who possesses some kind of arcane magic. It’s said that she can speak with every kind of animal in the world.” He paused for a moment, as if steeling himself to the task ahead. “King Matrurin is very taken with her, and has given her the task of improving his menagerie.”

“That’s certainly odd, but I don’t see why you’re looking so nervous.” He leaned forward, his eyes intent on Yves’s face.

“The girl is said to associate with Sir Myles of Olau, the ambassador to Galla, and with a mage who goes by the name Numair Salmalín. It’s been difficult to find concrete information about him, but my agents have come to believe that he was once Arram Draper, from Tyra. They also believe that this Salmalín is teaching the girl magic.”

Roger’s expression darkened. “Arram Draper,” he repeated slowly. “Not the fugitive black robe mage from the Carthaki University? The one Ozorne is so eager to sink his talons into?”

“That’s right, Your Majesty,” said Yves quietly.

“I see. And now he’s turned up in Cría, at court, and he’s befriended my ambassador and is teaching magic to a girl with so much power that the king trusts her to look after the royal menagerie.” He began to drum his fingers on the desk. “Would you say that about sums it up?”

“I would, Your Majesty.” Yves had grown pale, and beads of sweat were starting to appear along his temples. From his chair beside the fire, Alex grinned at him, showing his teeth to the spymaster.

“And surely,” Roger continued, his voice very mild, “if Matrurin has put this girl in such an exalted position at court, she has likely been there for some time, honing her powers. Breaking bread with Sir Myles and Numair Salmalín. Myles was, after all, a teacher. He enjoys the company of young people. Perhaps he’s been teaching her history.”

“I’m told that Sir Myles hired her on as an ordinary stablehand about a year ago,” said Yves smoothly. “None of my reports indicate that King Matrurin was even aware of her before Midwinter. We certainly had no idea that — ”

Roger slammed his fist down on the desk, disturbing his papers. “No idea? It’s your _job_ to have ideas, Yves. And need I remind you that it is currently February? Put some more agents in Cría _yesterday_.”

Yves’s eyes widened, flicking from Roger to Alex, who had begun toying with his belt knife again. “Of course, my king, I — I’m sorry, my king, but does he have to do that?” he asked quietly, through gritted teeth.

“Alex, put the knife away.” Roger looked as though he were about to say something else, and then got to his feet instead. “Would you gentlemen excuse me for a moment?”

He left the sitting room, heading deeper into his palace apartment. As his footsteps receded, Alex sat up straight in his chair, planted his feet on the floor, and tossed his knife into the air. The blade caught the firelight as it spun. He caught it easily by the hilt and sheathed it, waiting. They heard a door shut, and for a few breaths the room was silent.

Then there came a distant roar, as though the earth were tearing itself apart, and the sitting room rocked slightly on its foundation. Yves drew in a shaky breath, his face the color of milk.

“He does that occasionally,” Alex explained. “He’s always had a bit of a temper.”

“A bit of a temper,” repeated Yves, rather sarcastically. “I think, perhaps, this may have gone better if you hadn’t been here, Lord Alexander.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you’d be a pile of ash on the carpet by now. Hard to say, really. Do you have any news that’s going to make him happy?”

Yves took another deep breath. “Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

There came another sound of a door shutting, and then footsteps. When Roger reappeared, he was smiling as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “My apologies, gentlemen. Please, Yves, continue.”

He sat down again, and Yves cleared his throat. “Negotiations are going very well in the Yamani Islands, thanks to our ambassadors there. My agent there tells me that the emperor may be willing to marry a second-rank princess to Prince Jonathan, although for Prince Gavain he won’t go higher than third-rank.”

“Interesting,” said Roger, resting his chin on his fist as he thought that over. “Tortall has never had a Yamani queen before. This would annoy the Rittevons, of course, but since we’ve made them no promises yet, we may be able to smooth things over there. It would be better for one of their cousins to be betrothed to Gavain or little Alexander, anyway. Jon should marry a princess.”

Alex shook his head slowly. He didn’t envy either of the younger princes, being married off to some Copper Isles duchess or countess. Without knowing how closely related she was to King Oron, it was hard to say what the likelihood was that they’d have to lock her in a tower somewhere after a few years, but he didn’t like their odds.

“As for the Copper Isles,” Yves continued, “my agents there report that recently the king had one of his sons, Prince Hanoren, executed for treason.”

Roger raised an eyebrow. “What did Hanoren do? Shame he didn’t succeed in whatever it was.”

“Evidently he transformed into a rat, in a dream that King Oron had one night, and bit his father,” said Yves, his voice very dry.

“It’s nice to see that Oron is still distracting himself with aimless nonsense like that instead of doing any real damage. Anything else?”

“No, Your Majesty. I’ve heard no new reports yet from Tusaine or Maren. And we’re still working on placing new agents in Scanra, after what happened to the last ones.”

Roger nodded, looking satisfied. “You’re dismissed, then. Deal with the situation in Galla.”

Daine sat back on her heels, thinking. The main problem was space, of course. There simply wasn’t enough to work with, the way the menagerie was built at present. Adding more dimensions to the enclosures — more trees and rocks, and ropes or wooden structures for some — had only improved them so much. In order to really change things, the way she wanted to, she was going to have to ask the king to knock down several walls.

She paused to marvel at that thought. Imagine her, Daine from Snowsdale, Ma’s daughter who had never known she had a lick of magic until last year, asking a king for anything. In truth, speaking to King Matrurin still gave her the shakes, but this was a request for the animals, not for her.

She shook her head slowly, careful not to disturb either of the lorikeets perched on her shoulders. It was funny how much people could change in a year. About a year ago, she had finally worked up the courage to tell Numair and Sir Myles everything that had happened up in Snowsdale, with the madness and the wolves. For months before that, even after Numair had taken her on as a student, she had been too worried that Myles would throw her out if she told him. She felt a little silly remembering that now. It was hard to picture Myles throwing anyone out of his house, for any reason.

“What do you think?” she asked the lorikeets, aloud because no one who cared if she talked to them was about. “There isn’t much beyond the big cat enclosures to the north, just more of the Royal Forest. If we ask them to knock down that eastern wall, the cats will have more space without us doing any real damage to the palace. How’s that for a start?”

Having no love for the Carthaki lions or Copper Isles jaguars, the lorikeets told her they didn’t much care what she did. They simply wanted more trees to perch on.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get those no matter what.” She hummed thoughtfully. The ceilings were very high in the avian enclosures, but it would help to make them higher, if she could manage it.

Hearing footsteps, she looked up, and smiled when she saw Sir Myles approaching. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Are you busy right now? I came to ask if you wanted to go riding with me in the Royal Forest.”

“I can take a break. I’d love to go riding.”

I’ll be back later, she told the lorikeets, giving them an image of some carrot slices and pears she had left for them on one of the new wooden structures in their enclosure. When they flew off, chattering to each other, she stood up and brushed some feathers off her tunic and breeches.

In the end, it had been Numair who had finally given her the courage to wear breeches. During one of their lessons, he had led her and Cloud into the Royal Forest, to learn how far their connection extended and to practice meditation in a more natural setting than the garden outside the kitchen. After listening to her complain, not for the first time, about how hard it was to move in skirts, he had said gently, “But you’re a mage. You could wear breeches if you like. People are used to mages doing all kinds of odd things.”

To her surprise, Sir Myles hadn’t minded one bit. The first time he had seen her wearing breeches, he had nodded with approval and told her that she looked very practical. One day, she meant to ask him whether there were any other noblemen as odd as he was. She expected him to take it as it was meant, as a compliment.

Once, a few months back, she had asked him why he preferred that people call him Sir Myles, when he was the Baron of Olau in his own right. “Because I earned my shield,” he had replied, “and because I chose it. I did not choose to be born a baron’s son.”

“Earlier today I received a letter from the king of Tortall,” Myles told her now, as they walked out into the sunlight together, toward the palace stables. “He’s dealing with a problem in the northern part of the country, and he wanted to know whether I knew anyone here in Cría who might be able to help.”

Daine looked curiously at him, and he went on, “Several soldiers from the Tortallan army have gone missing in the mountains along the eastern border between Tortall and Scanra — a group of nine in April, and twenty more in July. Unfortunately, the City of the Gods makes that part of the country very hard to search.”

They had reached the stable. She greeted Cloud, and began checking her tack. “Why?”

He smiled. “I had to ask Numair the same thing over breakfast. Do you ever have that feeling when you know that something is the case, but you can’t quite remember _why_ it’s the case? At any rate, he tells me that it’s because the City of the Gods is the oldest center for the teaching of magic in the Eastern Lands. Over time, magic seeped into the bedrock of the city, and then spread to create an aura that obscures the city and the surrounding countryside for a radius of about five hundred miles.”

She whistled, thinking back to all those maps in Myles’s study. That was quite a lot of land indeed. “I take it that means your king can’t look for those missing soldiers with his magic.”

“Quite right,” said Myles, as they mounted up. “Neither King Roger nor anyone on his Council of Mages can search that part of the country magically. He’s sent more soldiers and army scouts to the Scanran border, and knights to treat with the lords of the fiefs there, but thus far — nothing.”

It was a beautiful morning for a ride, cool under the trees but not genuinely cold, with the day warming up quickly as the sun neared its zenith. The air smelled of fallen leaves and distant woodsmoke. “It sounds like maybe the king’s done all he can,” she commented. “What does he want you to do?”

Myles glanced at her, and she realized he was troubled. That worried her — she rarely saw Myles troubled by anything. “King Roger has heard about you,” he admitted.

“Me?” she said, surprised. “Why should the king of Tortall care about me? Does he want advice about his menagerie?”

You’re being silly again, said Cloud, when he’s trying to talk seriously to you. There’s already one king interested in you, so why not another?

“Evidently rumors of you have reached Tortall,” said Myles slowly, with that unhappy look still upon his kind old face. “Roger seems to be trying to work out the exact scope of your powers. He wrote, in the most vague and polite terms possible, of course, that he wonders whether you might be able to send animal scouts along the Scanran border to search for the missing soldiers.”

“Not from Cría. I’d have to go to Tortall myself for that.” She frowned, thinking the problem over. “And I’d need more information about the soldiers who disappeared, to make sure my friends know what to look for. Everything that’s currently known about these soldiers, and the circumstances under which they disappeared. And even then, I can’t promise I’d have any luck.”

Myles nodded. “I could ask the king for more information.”

She studied his face. “You don’t want me to go to Tortall, do you?”

He sighed. “To tell you the truth, Daine, I’d hoped that Roger wouldn’t find out about you at all. Or at least, not until you were a few years older. I don’t think you realized this at the time, but I was worried when King Matrurin wanted to meet you. As kings go, Matrurin is a fairly decent man, but . . .”

“You don’t think King Roger is a good man?” Worry was contagious, she thought, and now she had it. Myles had never talked about the king of Tortall much before now; she had never had cause to wonder what it might be like, serving a king you didn’t think was a good person.

“Quite frankly, I don’t. I think that given the chance, he will use you — perhaps for a good cause, to serve his kingdom — but all the same he will use you. I’d hoped never to give him that chance.”

There was someone coming, she realized, feeling an old familiar tug on her mind. For an instant she smelled pack-brothers and pack-sisters and felt the forest floor under her paws, ghostly sensations like the wind shifting, before she was firmly back in the saddle. Cloud was uneasy under her, and Myles’s gelding Applesauce wanted to bolt.

She turned to look at them. Myles was having trouble getting Applesauce under control, the horse’s eyes rolling with fear. “It’s wolves,” she said, trying silently to soothe their mounts. “And I think — I think I _know_ them.”

When they rounded the bend in the trail just ahead of her, she was sure of it. There were two of them, male and female, and they belonged to the Snowsdale pack. She slid down from Cloud’s back and ran to meet them.

The small male was Russet, whose fur was reddish white, and the brown-and-gray female was called Fleetfoot. They circled her, tails wagging as they sniffed her. She laughed as Fleetfoot began to wash her face with her long tongue, asking them how they had found her.

We found traces of you along the road from the old territory, Russet told her, as she settled down on the trail between them, sitting cross-legged to listen. We followed them south to this place.

The old territory? she asked, puzzled. You’ve left Snowsdale, then.

We fled west through the mountains, said Fleetfoot, to a valley with a lake. But now we’ve come to ask for your help. Humans are ruining the valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue has been adapted from _Wild Magic_ and _Wolf-Speaker_.
> 
> I was reluctant to mess too much with the timeline in any currently unpublished Numair books, but was comfortable absolutely destroying _Wild Magic_ , as you can see. Also, at some point it started to feel weird that we never learned Lord Sinthya's first name, so I made one up.


	8. Lessons

**439 H.E.**

The inn stood at the northern edge of the Lumuhu Valley, where two roads from the passes through the mountains met. Even now, halfway through May, the roads were blanketed by heavy snowfall.

“You could press on,” said the innkeeper to Alanna and her party, as he brought them cups of thick, milky tea, “but I wouldn’t recommend it. Better to settle in for a few days, and wait for Lumuhu to clear. Where are you bound?”

Sleet had begun to fall as they’d reached the inn, more rain than snow. “East,” said Eda, who had elected to remain with them at least as far as the western border of Jindazhen. “What about the other pass, Chitral?”

The man laughed. “Mother Chitral won’t open for travel until the solstice, but that’s a bad road even at the height of summer. The snow never leaves. Trust me, take Lumuhu. That road will take you straight into Bajrapur, the jewel of the eastern hills. Finest city between here and Jindazhen.”

“I’ve been there once,” remarked Eda, “but I never heard it called that.”

The Shang Wildcat remained downstairs by the fire while Alanna went upstairs to wash and change into cleaner clothes. As she unpacked, preparing to settle in for a longer stay than usual, she found the gown she’d last worn in Whitehall, on the morning she’d met Eda Bell.

It was a faded lavender, every stitch of it years out of Tortallan fashion and deeply creased from having been hidden for so long in one of her packs. She shook it out thoughtfully. “Well, why not?”

Alanna instantly regretted her choice when she reentered the common room wearing the lavender gown. As she tried to slip into the room quietly and settle down at their table as though nothing had happened, Buri ruined everything by letting out a loud whistle. Coram looked up, grinning at her. Thayet was staring at her as though transfixed, a faint smile playing over her lips.

“Honestly, you three,” said Eda, smiling and shaking her head. “Leave the poor girl alone.”

“You look lovely,” Thayet assured her, as Alanna sat down beside her, her face beet red. “We didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“I did,” said Buri. Her attention was on the innkeeper, who was approaching their table with a tray bearing a plate of dumplings and five bowls of spiced goat stew.

Alanna stuck her tongue out at her, and Buri responded in kind.

The next day was a little warmer, though the rain continued, turning the snow that covered the pass into four feet of slush. Resigning herself to a long stay, Alanna dressed for dinner in breeches and a clean shirt, and sat down to eat without incident.

This time, the incident occurred after dinner. She was sitting beside the small hearth in her bedroom, scouring her chainmail with sand, when there came a soft knock on the door. “Can I come in?”

That was Thayet’s voice, so Alanna let her in. She pulled the door shut behind her, and then smiled ruefully at Alanna. “I wasn’t joking yesterday, you know. I like the dress. You can wear it again, if you want to.”

“I prefer breeches,” Alanna replied, setting the mail shirt aside and wiping her hands clean on her knees. “They’re quieter. Less whistling.”

Thayet snorted, and then she smiled again. “Whatever you feel comfortable wearing,” she assured her. “You look just as nice in breeches as in a dress.”

Alanna felt her shoulders relaxing at that remark, and realized that she’d tensed up without knowing it. All her life, her femininity had been a subject fraught with discomfort and hidden dangers; people had always behaved as though it were a matter of life and death that Alanna put on a gown and learn to act like a proper girl. It was such a relief to find someone who liked her no matter how she dressed, for whom it only mattered that Alanna felt comfortable in her skin.

Some mysterious emotion passed over Thayet’s face, like the shadow of a cloud moving quickly over the land below, and she crossed to the hearth. Sitting down beside Alanna, she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. “Did you feel more free after leaving Tortall,” she asked her, “or is that just me?”

Alanna had noticed how relaxed Thayet had grown after they’d crossed the border out of Sarain. It was easier to make her laugh now; she teased Alanna more often, calling her things like “gallant” and putting wildflowers in her hair when she wasn’t looking, and she brought up her childhood now without prompting. In fact, Thayet spoke so frankly about her father, now that he was dead, that Alanna had developed the habit of thanking Coram for how well he’d raised her and Thom.

She gave Thayet’s question some thought. “No, not until recently,” she replied at last. “I was too busy grieving Jon’s death.”

Thayet glanced at her, an apology in her hazel eyes. “That’s right. I’m sorry. I think I did most of my grieving for my father before he died.”

Alanna had long felt the same way about her own father. “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad we’ve left Sarain.” Something about the intimacy of the firelight, and the quiet sincerity in her own voice, unsettled her. “Glad too that we’re not caught out in that,” she added, nodding toward the small window to her left, with its shutters tightly closed. They rattled slightly in the wind, which roared past them on its way down from the mountain peaks.

Thayet smiled. “How long do you think we’ll be trapped in here?”

“If it’s longer than a week, I might go mad. You’ll catch me trying to swim Lumuhu Pass.”

Thayet laughed. Feeling powerless to stop herself, Alanna smiled back at her. Not for the first time, she felt something within herself turning toward Thayet in some sense, the way that certain flowers were said to turn toward the sun.

Thayet pulled her feet under her, sitting curled up in her armchair like a cat, toying with the hem of her skirt. “What were you planning on doing, after your Ordeal of Knighthood?” she asked, as Alanna watched her, fascinated. “Were you going to tell them you were a girl?”

Alanna nodded. She had to clear her throat before she could speak again. “After I was knighted, and they couldn’t take it away.”

“And then?”

She shrugged. “Leave, I guess. Travel for a few years. I didn’t think they’d want me to stay, after I told everybody the truth.”

Thayet looked away, watching the flames dance in the hearth. “Wasn’t there anyone you’d miss?”

“Well, yes,” said Alanna, thinking of Sir Myles, and Jon and George, and Gary and Raoul. She even missed Duke Gareth and some of the palace servants, from time to time, and she’d never been as close with them. Even Alex, she thought, mourning the friendship they’d once had with a brief, surprising pang. “Of course.”

Thayet glanced sidelong at her. “A man? Or someone else?”

Alanna frowned, embarrassed to feel herself blushing. “No one I’d marry,” she said, wondering where Thayet was going with this. George had alluded to marriage, once, but he’d only been talking foolishness. Jon had never asked her, and even if he had, she’d never wanted to be queen.

Thayet looked oddly relieved. “I never wanted to be married off,” she confided in Alanna. “I’m glad I don’t have to, now.”

“You can choose who you marry,” Alanna agreed.

There was a pause, as Thayet gazed curiously at her. “Yes,” she said slowly, as though considering something, and then she reached over and gently touched Alanna’s face.

Alanna’s eyes widened as realization dawned. Suddenly she was fifteen years old again, standing with George in the shade of a tree, her arms full of packages; she was seventeen and wearing a black wig, sitting on a bench in the palace gardens beside Jon.

Thayet pulled her hand away, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I thought — ”

She had been flirting with her for weeks now, and Alanna had never realized it. Her teasing had never had the undertone of a threat, the threat of marriage and children that had always colored George’s and Jon’s interest in her; it had lacked the open malice of Delia’s flirting — and besides, Thayet had always known she was a girl, so she’d thought she was safe — and so she had missed it.

With no clear idea of what she was doing, Alanna reached out and put her hand on Thayet’s, steadying it on the armrest of Thayet’s chair. Thayet glanced down at their linked hands and then up again, meeting Alanna’s eyes.

“Is _this_ what girls get up to in convent school?”

Thayet blushed. “So I’ve heard. I wasn’t there for very long.”

Alanna had never heard of any pages or squires practicing kissing on each other, but maybe she just hadn’t been paying attention. “It’s not that I mind,” she tried to explain. “It’s just that you surprised me. I’d never realized girls did this.” Her face felt hot; she must have been blushing by now.

“I did,” said Thayet. “I’ve never tried it, though. There was — in one of my father’s libraries, there was a book of Sirajit love poetry that . . . It looked very old. I don’t think my father realized it was there. But I knew this was possible before I was sent to the convent.”

Alanna tried to imagine what was in that book of poetry, and couldn’t. The bad verse that Jon used to write had put her off poetry entirely; suddenly she wished she’d been more openminded. “But you’ve never kissed anyone before?”

“No,” said Thayet quietly. “There was someone at my father’s court I _wanted_ to kiss, but — she was married off to a Marenite nobleman before I worked up the nerve. Have you ever kissed anyone?”

“Yes,” Alanna admitted.

“So you see? You know more of the world than I do.”

Her spirits buoyed by the absurdity of that remark, Alanna leaned forward experimentally, over the space between their chairs, and kissed her. Thayet made a small noise and leaned in, her hand cupping Alanna’s cheek.

It had been well over a year since Alanna had kissed anyone, and Thayet’s mouth was soft and warm, warmer than the fire in the hearth just a few feet away. Heat pooled low in her belly, curling inside her, as outside, more distantly now, the cold rain continued to fall, the wind howled and the shutters rattled.

After a while, Alanna pulled away slightly, feeling shaken. She swallowed. “Do you — do you remember any of that Sirajit love poetry?”

Thayet’s hazel eyes were wide, her breath warm upon Alanna’s cheek. “I . . . think so.” She considered for a moment, and then said something, haltingly, in a lyrical, unfamiliar language.

“What does that mean?”

“ _My love moves like a gazelle in the night; her voice is like bells and the sound of rain._ ” Thayet smiled slightly, looking self-conscious. “Or something like that. It’s not a language I read very well.”

“Oh,” said Alanna, impressed. “Can I kiss you again?”

It was past midnight when Thayet left her room. First she kissed Alanna again, almost chastely, and then untangled herself from her, getting up from the chair they had come to share in a whisper of fabric, leaving behind the memory of warmth. Alanna watched her go, absently brushing a finger over her mouth, feeling as though she must have been marked in some way by this night. She would come downstairs the next day and everyone would be able to read her feelings on her face.

Faithful slipped in behind Thayet just before she pulled the door shut. “Where were you?” said Alanna, her eyes narrowing with suspicion when she saw him.

 _I thought I’d give you some privacy_ , he replied, curling up on the rug in front of the fire.

“You knew!” she said. “You knew this whole time and you never told me.”

_I’ve never liked playing the role of matchmaker. Besides, one day you must learn to live without me._

After the warmth of Thayet’s kisses, those words hit her like a splash of icy water. “What do you mean?” She had never wanted to think about Faithful’s eventual death; impossible though it seemed, some part of her had always believed that he couldn’t truly die.

 _I mean what I say_ , he replied, closing his eyes for a nap. _But that day is in the future. Don’t let it trouble you now. Go on, get some rest._

She discovered that Buri had learned about the kissing, when she found Alanna sitting alone at breakfast early the next morning. The rain was still too bad to practice outside, so Alanna had run through her dawn exercises alone in her room. As she sat beside the hearth, sipping tea, Buri sat down beside her. “Better you than some gouty old lord, or a foreign prince who drinks ale and eats pickled fish,” she said, by way of a greeting.

Alanna looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

“Thayet,” said Buri with gruff affection, looking knowingly at her.

Alanna stared at her for a long moment. “Did she _tell_ you?” she asked eventually, mortified.

“No, I guessed. She’s been mooning over you for weeks now, and when she got back late last night, I figured it had finally happened.”

Of course — she and Thayet shared a room. Alanna studied her, but she couldn’t see confusion or disgust on the younger girl’s face, only grudging acceptance. Then the rest of what she’d said sank in. “Pickled fish? Wait, do you mean herring? _I_ eat pickled herring.”

Buri frowned. “Why?”

“I’m from northwestern Tortall. Everybody eats it there. We drink ale, too.”

Buri shrugged. “You know what I mean, though.”

She did. She understood Buri now better than she had before. “You were worried she’d end up betrothed to someone she hated. Someone like her father.” Out of the blue, Alanna remembered those miniature portraits Jon had showed her; in some other world, she thought, it might have been Jon kissing Thayet last night instead of her. It was a strange thought, and stranger still was that she could think of Jon now with only an echo of pain.

Buri nodded and looked away. “I could use some tea. Where’s the innkeeper?”

**452 H.E.**

Kel blinked, shook her head slightly, and sat back in her chair. She’d nearly fallen asleep in class again. Healings always left her exhausted, and her encounter with Joren and Vinson the night before had been one of her more memorable fistfights.

It had started about a week ago with the realization, half an hour into a study session in Neal’s room, that she’d forgotten her half-finished mathematics homework on her desk. On the way back to her room to retrieve it, she’d stumbled across Joren and Vinson pushing Seaver of Tasride up and down the stairs to the squires’ wing. For the first time in her life, Kel had run from a fight with bullies, and it had eaten away at her for the next two days. She had been able to get no sleep at all that first night.

The next morning, she had begun training on lance, and was confronted in the training yard by cold, unforgiving reality: her arms were weak. She’d been up late that night too, trying to track down the Shang Wildcat.

She found Eda Bell in one of the indoor training courts, in the midst of doing a series of slow, fluid exercises. “For clarity of mind,” she explained to Kel. “Helps you sleep, too. I think we should be teaching them to you pages, but Wyldon is resistant to the idea. Says it’s foreign nonsense.”

She didn’t seem to mind stopping to show Kel an exercise for strengthening her arms. “Make your body flat like this,” she said, holding herself above the ground on her hands and toes. “Then lower yourself down, and push up. You give it a try.”

She stood over Kel, watching carefully. “Lower that behind. Back flat. No, girl, _bend_ your elbows. More than that.”

Slowly, Kel lowered herself an inch closer to the ground. When she pushed up again, her arms were shaking slightly.

“Here, do them on your knees for now,” said Eda Bell. “It’s more important to get the form right.” She demonstrated a few times, before getting to her feet again. “Try that.”

She watched Kel for a few moments before nodding, apparently satisfied. “Good. Do them like that until it starts to feel easy, and then switch to your feet. Besides, if you’re doing them at the end of the day, your arms are going to feel like overcooked noodles regardless.”

Kel pushed herself up into a sitting position. “That’s for sure,” she said, encouraged by the woman’s gruff patience. “Thank you.”

Eda Bell laughed. “After twenty of those, you won’t be thanking me anymore. Blame Hakuin Seastone — he’s the reason I’m here.” She offered Kel her hand, and Kel took it, letting the Wildcat haul her to her feet.

“I don’t usually settle down for long,” she explained, in answer to the girl’s curious look. “Yet here I am. We ran into each other down in Pearlmouth, and he told me he was on his way to Corus. By that point we knew a marriage alliance was likely, between the crown prince and a Yamani princess, and Hakuin wanted to be there to welcome her when she arrived.”

“Oh,” said Kel, a little surprised. She hadn’t thought to connect Hakuin Seastone’s presence here with the upcoming royal marriage, but in retrospect it seemed obvious.

“As for me, I wanted to meet the Eldorne queen, so I decided to join him. I grew up near Fief Eldorne, you see,” she said, with a shrug. “Maybe you always come home in the end. Run along now, it’s late.”

Kel thanked her again, and hurried off.

By the following Tuesday, she was able to do six push-ups on her toes with proper form, before switching back to her knees to finish the set. Her sparrows liked to line up on her windowsill to watch, which was the only thing that brightened the morning she dropped her lance, and learned that it had been weighted without her knowledge.

That night she sought Joren out, moving soundlessly through the corridors in her leather slippers until she heard his mocking voice ringing out from the pages’ main library. He was picking on Seaver of Tasride again, forcing him to pick up dropped books over and over.

Seaver caught up with her after lunch the next day, on the way from mathematics to their class on magical theory. He waited until she noticed he was there before he spoke, his face troubled. “I didn’t need you defending me.”

Kel sighed inwardly. She had spent the past few hours trying not to fall asleep while her teachers were talking, and the morning just trying to get through her combat lessons in one piece. She ached all over, and the last thing she wanted right now was an argument. “I didn’t do it for you.”

He frowned. “Why’d you do it, then?”

“I wanted to pick a fight with them and you were there, that’s all.” Seaver couldn’t be the only first-year that Joren and his friends bullied, but he had been their target again last night. She had gone looking for Joren, not him.

Seaver shook his head slowly. “If you’re looking to get kicked out, there’s easier ways of going about it.”

But Lord Wyldon hadn’t used the fight as an excuse to kick her out. She felt a fresh wave of relief at that thought, as they sat down to wait for Master Emeric to begin today’s lecture. He had offered her the chance to go home, but he hadn’t forced her to. Instead, he had sent her to the palace healers.

She and Seaver had arrived a few minutes later than the other students, and the only place left to sit was next to each other, between Esmond of Nicoline and Jasson of Eldorne. Seaver slouched in his chair, looking sullen. Kel couldn’t tell whether that was because he’d had to sit next to her, or because Master Emeric was easily their dullest teacher. It was always hard to stay awake whenever he started droning on about magic. She dug her nails into the palm of her hand, trying to focus on not dozing off.

All told, it had been a good evening, she thought as she stifled a yawn. Punching Joren and Vinson had made her feel much better, Lord Wyldon hadn’t expelled her, and she’d had the chance to meet Neal’s father. And after a few more weeks of training with the weighted lance and doing pushups before breakfast, her arms would be stronger. Maybe next time she’d be able to hit Joren harder.

Maybe she ought to have her other practice weapons weighted, too. That morning had been their second day of sword training, and she’d had to remind herself more than once not to swing it too hard. It was so light compared to her lance. Lost in thought, she almost missed it when Jasson leaned toward Seaver, over the gap between their desks, and punched his shoulder gently. “Ask her,” he hissed. “It was _your_ idea.”

Seaver glanced at Kel, looking vaguely ill. She frowned, wondering what that was about, but she kept her attention trained on the front of the room, determined to stay awake.

After class, Seaver and Jasson caught up with her on the way to history and law. “We heard you were good at mathematics,” said Seaver, meeting her eyes evenly when she turned to look at them. “We were wondering if maybe — ”

“Neal says you study with him after dinner,” said Jasson. “If we brought our homework to his room, would you mind helping us with those problems Master Ivor assigned for tomorrow?”

That was the last thing she’d expected them to say. It took some effort to keep the emotions off her face. Finally, some of the other pages besides Neal were including her in something, even if it was only because they wanted help with their homework. But after the trick Joren had played with the lance, she couldn’t help but feel suspicious. She took a moment to think before answering them.

In the face of her silence, Seaver started talking again. “We had some trouble with last night’s problem about horses,” he said nervously, “and this looks like more of the same.”

“We spent nearly an hour on it,” said Jasson bitterly, “and apparently did it wrong anyway. With my brother gone from the palace for the rest of the year, we’re both going to fail mathematics. We’ve been trying, really we have, but we can’t keep this up for much longer.”

Jasson’s brother was a squire now, Kel recalled. “Of course I’ll help,” she said at last. “Where’s your brother gone?”

“East to the Gallan border, to fight bandits with his knight-master.”

She raised her eyebrows. She didn’t envy any of the warriors stationed in the northern mountains over the winter. The weather was bad enough now in Corus, with the snowstorm that had begun two nights ago.

“We used to take our homework to his room,” Seaver explained, “whenever there was a problem we couldn’t figure out.”

“He’s probably glad to be free of us. You see, usually what would happen is Lerant would tell us to go away, we would open our books and start explaining where we’d run into trouble, and then his knight-master would hear us arguing and come over to see what was going on, and then _he’d_ help us with mathematics. Lord Alexander is a mathematical genius. We’re doomed.”

“Come by Neal’s room after dinner,” she said, as they went into their next class, the second-to-last one of the day.

Neal sat in the back corner of the room by a window, sprawled over two chairs. When he saw Kel approaching, he slid his feet off the seat he’d saved for her and made a show of dusting it off. “Kept it warm for you.”

“With your boots?” she said, amused.

“How was Old Emeric’s class?”

“Not very interesting.”

He shook his head. “I keep telling you, none of you Giftless pages know how lucky you are. We have Thom of Trebond this month. I’ve never met a man who cares less whether I learn anything. He just spends the hour talking about whatever he wants to.”

“Have you met Master Emeric?” she retorted.

Instead of replying, he jerked his head toward Seaver and Jasson, who had sat in the row in front of theirs, a few desks down. “What was that about?” he asked in an undertone. “Having a friendly chat with them?”

“Yes, actually,” she said, and told him what it had been about.

“Well, the more the merrier,” he said, his eyebrows ascending. “Slightly warmer, too.” That morning, riding class had been canceled for the second time in a row, and last she’d checked it was still snowing outside.

Master Arne, the young Mithran priest who taught history and law of the realm, either hadn’t heard about the weather or else was trying to distract them from it, because he spend the period lecturing about the southern part of the realm, specifically the succession crisis in Barzun which had led to the nation’s conquest by Jasson III about seventy years ago. He kept so close to the relevant chapter in their textbook, which Kel had skimmed the night before, that her thoughts began wandering again. She wondered whether she’d have time to visit Peachblossom that night. With two days of no riding classes, she was worried he would get bored and start up his old tricks again.

“Some of you may recall our recent lectures on the Bazhir Wars, and the history of the Bazhir in general,” said Master Arne, and Kel realized that either she had skipped over part of the chapter, or he had deviated from his script. “Specifically, I want to talk a little bit more about the Voice of the Tribes, and the role this figure plays in Bazhir culture. If you’ll recall, the Voice of the Tribes is the closest thing the Bazhir have to a single unifying leader. He is an expert on Bazhir law, and it is his job to settle disputes among his people. It is even said that he is able to communicate with his subjects across great distances via a magical link, though I would take that story with a grain of salt if I were you. Does anyone know who the current Voice of the Tribes is? Seaver?”

Kel glanced at Seaver, who was shaking his head, his jaw clenched. She frowned. Tasride was in the north, nowhere near the Great Southern Desert. Why was Master Arne asking him about the Bazhir?

It was because he looked part Bazhir, she realized. As far as she knew — and she didn’t know much about Seaver, to be fair — he hadn’t ever lived among the Bazhir the way she’d lived among the Yamanis for years. She hadn’t liked it when Master Oakbridge made her demonstrate Yamani bows over and over, in front of everyone, but at least he had called on her because of her knowledge, instead of the color of her skin. Somehow she doubted it was the first time something like this had happened to Seaver.

“Danyal of Pearlmouth is the current Voice of the Tribes,” said Master Arne, sounding faintly disappointed. “He’s held this position since around 440 H.E., after the death of the previous Voice . . .”

As he went on, Kel continued to frown, puzzled by something. Pearlmouth was the name of a port city on the southern coast of Tortall, as well as that of the fief that encompassed the city. She couldn’t tell whether Master Arne meant that the Voice of the Tribes was merely from Pearlmouth, or a member of the family that held Fief Pearlmouth. Bazhir commoners usually had surnames just like Tortallans, implying the latter.

Esmond of Nicoline raised his hand. “He isn’t a Bazhir, then?” he asked, when Master Arne nodded to him.

“The Voice is half Bazhir — his mother was the daughter of a tribal headman, and his father the younger son of a cadet branch of House Pearlmouth. His father died when he was young, so he was raised largely amongst his mother’s people. But the current Lord Pearlmouth is his first cousin, and he is a surprisingly popular figure amongst the former Barzunni nobility — particularly those who would rather see Barzun become a sovereign nation once again.”

“We should never have let them keep their titles and lands,” muttered Joren, loud enough for everyone to hear, when their teacher paused for a moment.

“Well, that’s been a subject of debate for years,” said Master Arne, before going on to describe the different noble families of Barzun, their histories and their various connections to the Tortallan nobility. Kel took notes, feeling uneasy.

“There’s going to be war in the south, isn’t there?” she said quietly to Neal later, as they left the classroom. “He as much as said this Danyal of Pearlmouth is rallying troops for it. _That_ wasn’t in the textbook.”

“Well — maybe,” said Neal, with a shrug. “A few southern noblemen have been grumbling for decades, but for the most part they haven’t really done anything about it. They don’t have the funds for it.”

Kel raised her eyebrows. “I thought Pearlmouth and Barzun City were pretty wealthy. Especially Pearlmouth.”

“Yes, and it’s wonderful for the merchants there. The nobles, on the other hand, have to host Their Majesties at lavish banquets every time Roger and Delia go on progress in the summertime.”

“Ah.”

“They only do it to make a point, to all the fiefs that have rebelled in the past, or are likely to rebel in the future. Pearlmouth is _awful_ in the summer. You go outside and it’s like wearing a hot, wet blanket.”

“You’ve been there?” she asked, as they walked into Master Oakbridge’s classroom, for their last class of the day.

“Once, a year or two before I left for the City of the Gods. My parents had to go on progress with Their Majesties, and they brought me along.”

She’d have to remember to ask him more about that later, she thought, as Oakbridge stalked into the room. Kel had never been to the Great Southern Desert or anywhere south of it, and she was curious about what it was like. Daydreams of miles upon miles of sand drifted in and out of her head, as the snow drifted down outside the window and she struggled to pay attention in class.

**439-440 H.E.**

The road down from the mountains was long, winding through dry foothills into the city of Bajrapur, the one that the innkeeper at Lumuhu Pass had called the jewel of the eastern hills. The city straddled the Chatra River, sprawling over the hills and grasslands that began, far off in the distance, to give way to the vast desert that lay between the Roof of the World and Jindazhen.

Alanna had never seen a city quite like it before. After weeks of riding through the mountains, she thought it was too bright, too crowded, too loud: a jumble of brightly painted shops and homes, bell-shaped temples and many-tiered pagodas gleaming in the light of the setting sun, colored banners tossed about by the bitter wind that blew down from the mountains. “It’s too cold here,” she complained to Thayet as they rode into the city. “Isn’t this supposed to be a desert?”

The Shang Wildcat, who was bringing up the rear of their party, had overheard her. “Deserts can be cold, you know,” she remarked, sounding amused. “We’re still on high ground here.”

They found an inn near the western gates of the city, near a small roadside shrine dedicated to some local god that Alanna had never heard of before. Beyond the shrine, the street began to rise steeply; most of the city appeared to be made up of hills. “How long do you think you could live here before your legs fell off?” she murmured to Buri, as they waited for a stablehand to take their horses.

“Me? I could go years. Remember, I’m a mountain girl.”

When the stablehand hurried over a moment later, Alanna realized that most people didn’t speak Common Eastern in Bajrapur, but some other, unfamiliar language. Eda spoke it well enough to be understood — as did Thayet, to Alanna’s surprise. Alanna listened to them talking with the stablehand and then with the innkeeper, trying to guess at what they were saying.

Buri was listening intently as well, she noticed. “It may be related to Doi. At court, Thayet learned some of the trade languages Saren merchants use with folk who live beyond the mountains, so she can muddle through whatever this is pretty well.”

“Do you speak Doi?” asked Alanna, curious. They had met a few Doi tribespeople at the inn at Lumuhu Pass, but she had never spoken with them.

“No, but some of the eastern K’miri speak it,” she replied. “I think I recognize a few words.”

They had strayed too far from Tortall, thought Alanna. She had twenty years’ worth of knowledge and experience, and none of it would be useful here, so far from home. She was starting to feel helpless, a feeling she’d always hated. Would she spend the rest of her life relying on Thayet and Eda Bell?

But this was what she had wanted, she thought, as they went upstairs to their rooms. To see the world, to travel further than anyone she’d ever known. And now she had, and was having second thoughts.

They had been given a line of rooms on the second floor, looking out over the street and the opposite row of shops. Alanna took the room next to Buri, who walked straight into the one at the end of the hall, talking loudly of how grateful she was for a bath. To Alanna’s surprise, Thayet followed her, clutching her saddlebags.

Alanna frowned at her, puzzled. “Aren’t you going to share with Buri?” She regretted the words as soon as she’d said them, worried suddenly that she might have hurt Thayet’s feelings.

Thayet shrugged, and closed the door behind her, her expression neutral. “She suggested I try sharing with you this time, unless you’d prefer otherwise.”

“No,” said Alanna quickly, trying to sort through the surge of emotions she was feeling. “Please, stay.” Were they meant to share a bed now? She didn’t have the first idea of what to do if they did, aside from kissing, but she was interested in finding out. But suppose Coram and Eda figured out what was going on? She thought the Wildcat would probably take the news in stride, given how much of the world she’d seen, but she was worried about Coram.

Thayet smiled, looking relieved. “Oh good. I think she wants her own room.”

“I’d say she’s earned it,” said Alanna, smiling knowingly at her.

She opened the shutters to air out the room, and they began to unpack their bags. As Alanna was shaking out her only gown, trying to get the wrinkles out, Thayet dumped the contents of one of her saddlebags onto her bed, giving her the second surprise of the last half hour.

Glittering among the jumbled pile of Thayet’s underthings were an array of jewels: earrings, rings, pendants. Alanna raised her eyebrows, impressed. “I didn’t realize you had a small fortune with you.”

Thayet swept them up again, dumping them into a worn stocking for safekeeping. “Some of them were my mother’s,” she said, shaking out a breastband before folding it neatly. “She gave them to me before she sent me off to the convent, so I’d have the funds to get out of Sarain if I had to flee.”

Alanna shook her head slowly, thinking of all the jewelry she’d left behind at Castle Trebond. It had belonged to Thom, really, since their father’s death, but she knew her brother would have let her take some, if only she’d thought of it.

“We’re going to have to make them last,” said Thayet, “until we all find some kind of employment.”

“I was a weapons instructor for a while in Tyra. And Coram’s found work as a blacksmith here and there, since we left Trebond.”

“Were you?” Thayet considered that, as she continued folding her clothes. “I’m not sure what I could teach.”

“Didn’t you receive a good education at your father’s court?” said Alanna, thinking of how easily she’d been able to converse with the innkeeper downstairs. “You could teach plenty of things — languages, history, reading and writing. I saw how you were with the children, on the road to Rachia.”

Thayet smiled at her. “Thank you. We’ll figure something out.”

The next morning, Alanna rose early and dressed quietly for her dawn practice, taking care not to wake Thayet. At first she was alone except for Eda, but as the sun began to creep over the hills to the east, she realized they had company. A group of small boys, likely apprentices or message runners, had gathered just beyond the gate to watch them. Alanna continued her sword drills, trying to ignore their chatter. She couldn’t understand a single word they were saying.

“What language do they speak here?” she asked Eda later, as they went inside for breakfast.

“Mainly Bajrati,” Eda replied. “But there are dozens of other languages spoken in the region. Common Eastern was an imperial language in Tortall, you know. It stamped out all the local languages hundreds of years ago, save for Bazhir and Hurdik, and the latter’s endangered now. If you really want to get by east of the Roof of the World, you’ll need to learn multiple languages. But Bajrati’s a good start.”

“Can you teach me some?” asked Alanna.

She nodded. “I’m far from fluent, but I’ll do my best. You’ll want to use it as much as you can, once you learn enough to form a few sentences.”

Thayet and Buri joined them after a while, as Alanna was learning how to introduce herself and greet others in Bajrati. Coram followed them shortly thereafter, bleary-eyed and yawning. For a moment he stood beside the table, listening to Eda correct Alanna’s pronunciation. “What on earth is goin’ on?”

“I’m learning, Coram,” said Alanna. “You should try it.” She listened to Eda repeat a phrase slowly, and then tried again.

“What ye said doesn’t sound anything like what she said,” he observed.

She stuck out her tongue at him.

Alanna started trying out her clumsy Bajrati on the innkeeper, who laughed at her at first, but replied slowly and clearly, in simple sentences. Sitting downstairs in the common room, she listened to the patterns of conversation around her, the rise and fall of the unfamiliar words. She talked with the stablehands and the maids, some of whom took pity on her and pointed out some of the nearby objects, teaching her new words for them.

About two weeks after they arrived in Bajrapur, she was practicing her sword drills outside, in the early morning, when one of the boys gathered beyond the gate called out something that she understood.

“What’s your sword’s name?”

Alanna looked up, surprised. “Do all swords have names here?” she asked, stumbling over her pronunciation. There seemed to be far more consonants in Bajrati than in Common Eastern, and she couldn’t hear the difference between some of them. One of the other boys giggled, and she grinned at him.

“They do in stories,” replied the boy who had called out to her.

“Its name is Lightning,” said Alanna. She didn’t know the word for _lightning_ , but the boy looked impressed nonetheless.

A few days later, she went upstairs to her room to wash up before supper, and found Thayet sitting on their bed, surveying her jewelry again. “I’m trying to decide what to sell first,” she said, when she heard Alanna come in.

“Are we that hard up for money?”

Thayet shrugged. “We may want to move somewhere cheaper, if we choose to stay in Bajrapur for a while.”

They found a boardinghouse on the northeastern edge of the city, where the dense tangle of steep and narrow streets began to give way to farmland. Watered by the river-fed canals that crossed the flatter parts of the city, the fields rolled green and lush down toward the drier grassland that extended east toward the desert.

There was a blacksmith’s forge a short walk away, where Coram was quickly able to find work, with Thayet there to translate when the few words and phrases of Bajrati he had picked up failed him. Thayet, on the other hand, had told their new landlady, Mistress Joshi, that she was a teacher.

“What do you teach?” Mistress Joshi asked her, as they sat downstairs in the sitting room that first afternoon, beside the hearth. It was a cold day for late summer; one of the city’s rare storms had blown in from the mountains that lay north of the city, bringing bitter winds and a scattering of rain. Alanna extended her feet toward the hearth fire, listening to what she could understand, and waiting for Thayet to fill her in on what she couldn’t.

“Reading and writing,” she replied cheerfully. “Mathematics, history, a few of the languages spoken west of the Roof of the World. I was educated at the Saren court.”

“Is that so? Are the rest of you girls teachers as well?”

“My friend here has worked as a weapons instructor,” said Thayet, smiling at Alanna.

“Well, I’ll let you know if I hear of anyone looking for a tutor or weapons instructor,” said Mistress Joshi, before going off to see what the housemaids had accomplished that morning.

There was more open space to practice outside than there had been in the small yard in front of the inn. Alanna liked doing her morning sword drills near the kitchen garden, where she could watch the sun rise behind the temple that stood half a mile down the road, its many-tiered tower rising out of the long grass like a strange tree. Within a week after their arrival, the children started gathering to watch her here as well, temple students as well as apprentices from the nearby forge. She paid them no mind, knowing they would turn shy and run if she did.

One morning, not long after they’d moved in, she was sitting outside of the temple writing a letter when Coram found her. “Heading back for lunch?” she asked, surprised to see him. “Is it that late in the day already?”

“Aye,” he said, sitting down beside her, at the edge of a wide stone pool fed by water spouts carved to look like animals. Alanna liked to watch the water splash into the basin, and the people who came to wash their clothes or fill jars from the spouts. “What are ye working on?”

“A letter to Sir Myles,” Alanna replied, with a crooked smile. “Mistress Joshi tells me if I send it down the river on a merchant boat, it should reach Berat within a month or two. Even with the storms that usually batter the coast this time of year, that’s safer than sending it overland through Sarain.”

“Sound advice.” He looked away suddenly, across the water, and then cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk with ye, actually. About yer princess.”

Alanna frowned, feeling an uneasy prickling over the back of her neck. “What about Thayet?”

He turned back to her, smiling, though there was a sad look in his eyes. “It’s good to see ye happy again, lass, after what happened back in Tortall. It hurt to see ye grieving, when there was nothin’ I could really do for ye. If she makes ye happy, I’m glad for it. That’s all.”

She blinked away sudden, surprising tears. “You figured it out, then. Or did Buri tell you?”

Coram shook his head. “It was plain enough after she moved into yer room here.” He looked away again, gazing out across the nearby farmland. “Men used to pair up when I was in the army, from time to time. They tried to keep it secret, of course — we’d all been taught that went against the natural way of things. But it seemed common enough back then, so I always figured, well, who am I to say what’s natural?”

“That wasn’t your approach to magic,” she pointed out.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “That’s different. Anything that can make me see what’s not there or turn me into a fish _is_ unnatural.”

They didn’t speak of it again after that day, but Coram didn’t seem changed by their conversation. He treated her and Thayet with the same gruff kindness he always had. Life continued as it had, and as weeks and then months went by, Alanna’s language skills began to improve, just as her skill with Shang fighting had over time.

The boys who gathered to watch her practice in the mornings grew bolder. Soon they grabbed sticks and started to imitate her sword drills, clustering in the shadows at the edge of the yard. When she didn’t run them off, they began to move closer, wanting her to see what they could do. Eventually she found that she could give them advice without scaring them away.

As she and Eda Bell corrected the placement of small hands on a stick, or demonstrated proper footwork for another boy, Alanna remembered doing the same last year for the merchant’s sons in Tyra, and she wondered how she’d managed it then. How had she kept going each day, when she was still raw with grief? Forcing herself out of bed in the early morning light; her hours spent guiding, gently correcting, smiling her encouragement; falling into bed each night exhausted. Day upon day, some bad and others less so. Stubbornly moving forward through time, in the same way she had kept going, mile after mile, until she was out of Tortall.

Maybe this was healing, she realized now, with the distance of nearly two years and thousands of miles. Maybe this was the only way to keep going: day by day, until the grief and anger faded a little into memory, becoming part of the worn fabric of one’s life.

One morning, midway through September, Alanna was sitting downstairs by the hearth with Thayet when a harried-looking Mistress Joshi approached them. “It isn’t what you’re used to, perhaps,” she said to Thayet, “but I may have a job for you.”

Pushing away a lock of hair that had escaped her low bun, she sat down beside them. “It’s my sister, Dipa,” she explained. “Her husband died recently, and she needs someone to look after her children while she works as a laundress. I’ve been watching them during the day, but they get underfoot, and they’re too young for me to put them to work around the house.”

“We could look after them,” offered Thayet. “We cared for young children in Sarain, for a while.”

Mistress Joshi smiled, looking relieved. “That would be a blessing, truly. They’re two and five; Harish is just old enough to be getting into trouble. You could teach them the alphabet, tell them stories — whatever you can manage is better than what they’re getting now.”

“Of course,” said Thayet, as Alanna tried not to scowl. She hadn’t spent years training for her knighthood to become a nursemaid.

Mistress Joshi gazed into the fire, frowning slightly. “I don’t suppose your other friend teaches magic?” she said after a while, almost reluctantly.

“I’m a mage,” said Alanna, curious. “Why?”

Their landlady turned back to them, looking relieved again. “The older child, Jaya, is some kind of witch, it seems. She’s the only one in the family, and my sister doesn’t know what to do about her. Dipa’s always having to put out small fires and untangle strange knots in her thread. Yesterday the girl burned up the rest of this week’s firewood while I was looking after her.”

Alanna winced.

She spent most of the next morning teaching her new charge how to control her magic, while Thayet scratched out foreign letters in the dirt just beyond the kitchen garden, teaching the girl’s brother the sounds that accompanied them. It was a fine day, warm for early autumn in the foothills of the Roof of the World, and in the open air Jaya could do less damage than she could in Mistress Joshi’s sitting room. As the girl lit small pyramids of twigs alight, Alanna glanced up from time to time, watching Thayet work.

“Did you learn that alphabet at your father’s court?” she asked her later, over supper.

“Some of it,” Thayet replied, “but I didn’t learn to read and write it well until after we got here.” She smiled teasingly. “I’ll teach you the alphabet, too, if you like.”

Sometimes Buri took over for a while, teaching the children K’miri games in between their lessons. Harish, who couldn’t sit still for long, began to seek her out as soon as his mother arrived at the boardinghouse in the mornings, to drop off her children and collect laundry from her sister’s tenants. “He talks of nothing but the shadow fighting game now,” said Dipa one morning, nearly a week into Alanna’s new life as a nursemaid. She was a young woman, a decade older than Alanna at most, with slightly wavy black hair, a willowy frame, and a weary smile. “I never know what he’s talking about.”

One evening in early October, Dipa returned late from the temple, where she did her laundry in the stone basin, and found Coram sitting beside the fire with Alanna and Thayet, bouncing Harish upon his knee. Alanna noticed her first, standing there in the doorway of the sitting room with a puzzled frown upon her face. When he saw her, Harish slid down from Coram’s knee and ran to her, crying “Mama!”

“You’re an odd-looking nursemaid,” remarked Dipa, raising her eyebrows teasingly, after she had greeted her children.

Coram, who had scrambled to his feet, bowed to her. “Good evening, mistress,” he said, in his clumsy Bajrati. After she had left, he turned to Alanna, red-faced. “What did she say?”

“Coram, you’re blushing,” said Thayet, trying to hide a smile, as Alanna translated for him.

“Fine figure of a woman,” he mumbled, before going upstairs to change out of his work clothes for supper. Alanna watched him go, amused. He wasn’t that old, she was startled to realize, only forty or so. Plenty of soldiers waited until they were around forty to marry.

Autumn gave way to a mild winter and a wet spring. In late February, Alanna received a reply to her letter from Sir Myles, who had enclosed letters from Thom and George as well. Her brother remained at court, where Roger had put him to work repairing old layers of water purification spells on the palace wells. _Profoundly dull stuff_ , he had written to her, _but I grin and bear it for the sake of keeping my skin where it belongs_. George was still in Corus as well, where he collected news from the capital and passed it along to Sir Myles, who appeared to be building some kind of international spy network that ran parallel to Roger’s. “You’d think he would just let himself have a quiet retirement,” she complained to Faithful, “instead of courting trouble all the time.”

 _Him?_ said Faithful, who sat beside her washing his paws. _I doubt it._

“Why not?” she said, sounding more bitter than she’d intended. “I did.”

 _Instead of retreating quietly to Fief Trebond and remaining there, becoming an easy target as Roger hoped you would_ , said her cat, _you’ve ridden halfway around the world, through a civil war no less. You’ve learned Shang fighting and an entirely new language, and now you’re teaching magic and combat skills to local children. Are you truly unhappy with your life?_

She considered that for a few moments, and was forced to conclude that she wasn’t unhappy at all, not anymore. It wasn’t what she had wanted, growing up, but she was beginning to make her peace with what she’d lost. “Well, it’s quieter than being a knight,” she retorted, for the sake of argument, “and anyway I’m different. I’m much younger than Myles.”

 _You’ll be twenty-one in a few months_ , Faithful pointed out. _There was a time, not so long ago, when you would have considered that to be very old._

Her birthday came and went, and the weather grew hot and dry again. As summer wore on into autumn, they began to hear rumors in the marketplace that a new warlord had come to power in Sarain. “They say he’s arranged to marry a K’miri woman,” Buri told them one day in October, her eyebrows rising dramatically, as she returned home carrying a basket full of persimmons and steamed dumplings for their lunch. “I’ll be interested in seeing how _that_ turns out.”

A few weeks later, Alanna was practicing her Shang fighting outside at dawn, when she learned that Eda Bell was planning on leaving them soon.

“I was never meant to stay in one place for long,” the older woman explained gently, as Alanna stared at her, stricken. “Shang warriors don’t settle down.”

“I know,” said Alanna eventually, her throat unexpectedly tight. “Where will you go?”

“South, I think. I’ll catch a boat down the river, and see where that takes me.”

Alanna nodded. Some part of her had always known that the Wildcat would move on eventually, but she had hoped that day was further off in the future. “I’ll miss you,” she confessed.

Eda sighed. Then, to Alanna’s surprise, she held out her arms. “Oh, my girl,” she said quietly, pulling her close like a mother would have done. “I’ll miss you, too. But you’ll be all right. You’ll be all right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, a few lines are adapted from the books.
> 
> In the middle of this chapter, you can see an echo of the moment, over a decade ago now, when I cracked open my copy of _Terrier_ for the first time, looked at the map, and went "Hang on, there was a whole separate country down there two hundred years ago? What happened?"
> 
> Apparently I got Thayet's eye color wrong for, like, three successive chapters. Just going to go back and quietly fix that now.


	9. Chivalry

**450 H.E.**

Just as Numair had said it would, the tower contained a model of Fief Dunlath, complete with the barrier that enclosed it like a soap bubble. There was the castle in miniature, on a table in the center of the room, surrounded by the blue painted water of the lake. And there were the opals, embedded in the northern and southern passes. Gripping her belt knife where hilt met blade, Daine raised it to smash the first opal, but Numair raised his hand. “Wait.”

She turned back to him. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s going to be a backlash from the barrier’s destruction,” he replied. “I suspected it before, knowing Tristan as well as I do. Looking at the model now, I’m certain of it.”

Daine frowned. “What kind of backlash?”

“I imagine the room will explode,” he said, smiling wryly. “He was always pulling little pranks like this when we were in school together. Give me a moment to put up the necessary shields.”

She glanced at the little cauldron of bloodrain beyond the model of the valley, imagining what might happen to it if the room blew up. “Some prank.”

He made a complicated motion with his hands, and then nodded. “All right. You take the north opal, and I’ll take the south.”

The first crack over the face of her opal produced a spiderweb of dark lines over the barrier encasing the model of the valley. When Numair split his stone, a high-pitched whine split the air, raising the hair on the back of Daine’s neck. When she raised her knife again and slammed the pommel down on her stone, the opal shattered and the model blew up.

She blinked as the pieces rained down harmlessly a few inches in front of her. “You made a barrier of your own.”

Numair sheathed his belt knife and dusted off his hands. “I should deal with the bloodrain before Tristan gets here.”

“Be my guest,” she said, taking a big step backward.

He approached the cauldron, his lips moving silently. A feeling of pressure built up in the room again, similar at first to the contained explosion of the model, and then growing much worse. His hands moved again, writing some unfamiliar symbol on the air in black fire. As Daine’s instincts screamed at her to run, there suddenly came a loud pop and the cauldron vanished.

She inhaled deeply, relieved to find she could breathe again. “Where did you send it?”

“Somewhere else,” he replied, turning away from where the bloodrain had been. “Not a place as you would think of one. Now to find Tristan, if he survived the excitement. I hope he did.” There was a glint in his eyes that made her shiver. “I have some things to say to him, and none of them are ‘Goddess bless.’”

As they hurried back down the tower stairs, giving the body of the Coldfang a wide berth, she remembered something else. “You can deal with Tristan alone when he gets here, can’t you?”

He nodded. “Unless the Tortallan mages have arrived by then, which I doubt. But I don’t really need them. Why?”

“I need to find Belden and Yolane.”

Belden was easy enough to find, lying dead and alone in his bedroom. She tried to put him out of her mind, feeling sick and angry as she stalked out of the room. The important thing right now was that Yolane was going to escape. As she ran down the corridor, Daine called to the mice to find out if the lady was still in the castle.

She’s gone, said Cloud, from the stable where Daine had left her. I tried to stop her, but she got away on horseback. It was after the other two-leggers left.

The mages had left well over half an hour ago, thought Daine, trying to gauge how long it had taken her and Numair to find the tower and get past the Coldfang. That didn’t give Yolane much of a head start, big as Fief Dunlath was, but it was still a head start. She raced down to the stables, calling out to the animals who were in range as she ran, asking them to find the lady if they could and slow her down.

When she and Cloud rode into the courtyard, she found Numair standing there, gazing intently up into the brilliant blue sky. A hurrok was approaching the castle, with Tristan on its back.

“Belden’s in there,” she said to her teacher, jerking her head in the general direction of his bedroom. “He killed himself. Yolane got away.”

“You’re going after her?” he asked, sounding distracted.

Daine nodded. “If she’s to get away clean, she must be headed west. She could see from here the north and south passes are pretty hot, and they’ll be even hotter now that the barrier’s down.”

“Can you deal with her alone?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ve asked some friends to help. The pack isn’t quite in range here, but they will be once I get a little ways from the castle.”

“Try wading in the lake,” he suggested.

The water was icy, numbing her to the waist in seconds, but the cold enabled her to reach Brokefang, who was up at the northern fort with the rest of his pack. They had won the fight there, she learned. Smiling with relief, she sent him an image of Yolane on her horse. She’s headed for the western pass, she told him. She’ll be riding hard, but she left the castle less than an hour ago, so you should be able to reach her in time.

As she emerged from the water, a Stormwing lighted on a branch above her. “Don’t try me,” she said, reaching for the longbow strapped to Cloud’s saddle. “I’ve had a very long week.”

“So have I,” replied Rikash. “I couldn’t help but notice my side appears to be losing the battle here.”

“Where are the rest of you?” she asked, as she strung her bow. Alone, he might not do much damage, but a flock of Stormwings nearby would mean Numair was badly outnumbered.

“There’s a battle going on right now near the southern fort,” he explained. “It’s not going very well.”

“You’re a Stormwing,” she replied, setting an arrow to her string. “Doesn’t every battle go well for you?”

“Put that thing away. I came to discuss terms.”

She didn’t have time for this; she needed to find Yolane before she reached the western pass. Daine thought for a moment, considering her brief history with him. She didn’t want to kill him, she found, somewhat to her surprise.

“I don’t like you, or the rest of your kind,” she told him. “But Maura likes you, for some reason, and my quarrel’s not with you right now. Go home to Carthak, and we’ll let you live.”

“That’s fair,” he said, with a sigh. “I’ll let the emperor know not to expect any more opals from Dunlath.”

She watched him fly away, unstringing her longbow only after he was out of range, and then swung into the saddle. “Let’s go.”

She and Cloud were within sight of the western foothills when she felt wolves nearby, pursuing a woman riding a mare. As she crested the next rise, Daine caught sight of Yolane about a mile ahead of them, whipping her horse into a gallop. The wolves encircled them, keeping pace with the mare. A cloud of starlings followed, harrying Yolane, trying to slow her down. She raised her whip again, swinging it around her face to keep the birds at bay.

Daine would have to slow her down. Cloud was tired, and the distance between her and Yolane was only growing as the noblewoman approached the pass.

Hoof-sister! she called to Yolane’s mare, cutting through her terror with an image of herself and Cloud. Dump the human! It is her we want, not you. Run to your stable! Leave her here, and the wolves won’t hurt you!

The mare slowed her pace slightly, confused.

Enraged, Yolane raised her whip again. When it struck flesh, the horse bucked her off and raced away. As Daine had promised her, the wolves moved aside to let her pass.

The wolves circled Yolane, concealing her from view. “I’m sorry,” Daine murmured to Cloud, as she urged her down the hill toward them. “Just a little further.”

I’m all right, replied Cloud. Of course, we _are_ going to have to walk back to the castle after this.

Yolane lay in the road, pale and still. The starlings circled overhead; the wolves lay in the grass, panting. Thank you, said Daine to the starlings as she dismounted, but you’d best leave her alone now. She knelt beside Yolane and brought her hand close to the lady’s mouth, feeling for breath, and was relieved to find her still alive.

As they waited for the lady to regain consciousness, Daine brushed down Cloud and the wolves rested, exhausted and satisfied after their long chase. After a few minutes, Yolane awoke and greeted Daine with a torrent of rude language.

“Shut up,” said Daine, when the lady began to repeat herself. “Please.”

Yolane fell silent, pleasantly surprising her.

 _Much_ better, said Brokefang, who stood beside Daine. Will you take her alone, or shall we drive her? I think that you will need our help.

“On your feet, milady,” said Daine. “We’re all going to walk back to the village together. If you behave yourself, you’ll be fine. If you try to run, my friends will bring you down.”

When this was over, she thought, when she had handed Yolane over to the Tortallans and said good riddance to her, then she could finally go home and rest. She took a deep breath, thinking longingly of her bedroom in the stable at Sir Myles’s townhouse, and then pointed in the direction of Dunlath Castle. “Move.”

After everything that had happened over the past week, she didn’t have the energy or the desire to stop the wolves from harrying Yolane a bit as they walked along. She followed Brokefang and Cloud, enjoying the weather in silence. It was a fine autumn day, with the sun bright overhead and just the faintest smoky chill in the air, just like the weather in Galla. When they had first ridden into Tortall, she hadn’t even realized they’d crossed the border.

They had nearly reached the village when riders met them. In the lead were Numair, sitting gray-faced in his saddle, and Sir Sacherell of Wellam, whose king had given him the unlucky task of visiting Fief Dunlath in search of the missing Tortallan soldiers. Daine grinned when she saw them. The last time she had seen the Tortallan knight, he had been riding hard for the City of the Gods in the early hours of the morning, after the three of them had dined with Yolane and her household.

She had liked him from the start of their adventure. He was a big, solid man with a friendly face, who had not talked down to her at any point, or laughed when she’d stood up after dinner that night and made her case for the animals of Fief Dunlath. He had barely managed to slip out of the valley before the barrier was raised, in search of someone who could far-speak with the king and warn him of their suspicions about Yolane.

“Looks like you’ve done our work for us,” he said cheerfully, peering down at her entourage through the open visor of his helm. “Hello again, Lady Yolane.” Like the other men with him, most of whom wore the uniform of the Tortallan King’s Own, his armor was marked by a day’s hard fighting.

“You got here quick, sir,” said Daine. “I figured what with the mercenaries — ”

“Your ogre friend — Iakoju, was it? — delivered your letter, so we were forewarned about Captain Blackthorn and his men. The Knight Commander of these lads,” he said, indicating the men behind him with a jerk of his chin, “is finishing up with them now, with a couple of mages for backup. From what Master Numair tells us, though, we didn’t need to bring so many mages.”

“Whatever you did to the southern fort, I liked it,” said the knight riding on Numair’s other side. He removed his helm and gauntlets, securing them to his saddle next to his battered purple shield, and dismounted gracefully.

“That would have been Lady Maura,” said Daine, watching him curiously. “What did she do?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” he replied, “but I would guess it involved blasting powder.”

Daine let out a low whistle, impressed.

“I’m sorry,” said Sir Sacherell, “I completely forgot. Alex, this is Mistress Veralidaine Sarrasri, late of Galla. Daine, may I present Lord Alexander of Tirragen, the King’s Champion.”

She looked him over, surprised. He had Numair’s dark coloring but none of his height; standing face to face with Daine, he was only a few inches taller than her, and she would guess that Sacherell of Wellam outweighed him by about fifty pounds. Seeing her staring at him, Lord Alexander nodded to her, smiling slightly. He had been watching the pack and Yolane with a detached kind of interest; she had seen the same expression before on some of the wolves’ faces, when they were presented with horses whom they could not eat.

“Pleased to meet you.” He had a low, rather flat voice; something about it gave her the impression that he was not someone who startled easily. “Would you excuse me for one moment?”

He walked over to Yolane and put a hand on her shoulder. “Yolane of Dunlath,” he said, sounding rather bored by what he was saying. “I hereby arrest you in the name of King Roger and Queen Delia of Tortall, for the crime of high treason.”

The wolves raised their voices in a triumphant howl, and Yolane shuddered. Lord Alexander didn’t flinch; he kept his eyes on hers, and she gazed intently back at him, hatred on her face. “I am guilty as charged, you king’s lapdog,” she muttered. “Now will you get me away from these monsters?”

“They have a different idea of who’s the monster here,” said Daine, suddenly furious with her again. “And I think _they_ have the right of it.” After what Yolane had done to her own people, to the land she had sworn to protect, she blamed the Tortallans for arresting her?

She took a deep breath and then turned back to Numair, whose skin had a gray undertone she didn’t like. “How are Maura and Tait and Flicker?” she asked him, suddenly worried that she had lost one of them without even knowing it.

“Waiting at the castle,” he reassured her. “The squirrel needs some of your help.”

She was about to ask Numair how he was feeling, when the King’s Champion spoke again. “Is that going to take long? I hate to rush you, but I’d like to be on the road back to Corus by nightfall.”

She glanced at him, confused about what precisely that had to do with her, and then returned her attention to Numair. Her teacher’s expression was difficult to read, but he didn’t look happy. “The king of Tortall has graciously invited us to his court for a few weeks,” he explained. “I’m told he wants to thank us personally.”

“Oh,” she said, thinking that this was what Sir Myles had been afraid of, before they’d left for Dunlath. She turned back to the knight. “It depends on the seriousness of Flicker’s injuries, my lord, but normally a healing doesn’t take more than a few hours.”

He nodded, his jaw set. She saw him glance over at Numair, who met his gaze evenly. They’d had words earlier, she realized, and none of them had been “Goddess bless.”

Lord Alexander was watching her with calculating interest on his face. “Can you heal people, or just animals?”

She tried not to bristle at the way he’d said it. “Strictly animals, my lord. And if we’re to leave tonight, would you mind if I took a moment to say goodbye to my friends here?”

He frowned, as though confused, and then his dark eyes widened slightly. “Be my guest.”

As he mounted up again, Daine walked among the wolves, fighting tears as she shared their thoughts one last time. She hadn’t expected to have to say goodbye to them so soon. She had hoped Maura might let them stay for a while longer, just to rest, before they headed home to Galla.

Wolves don’t say goodbyes, Fleetfoot told her. They’re sad things.

We will see you to the southern pass if you like, said Brokefang, making her smile. Go see to Flicker now.

She swallowed, feeling faintly sick. The southern pass. They were going to head south. She took a deep breath, and attempted a smile again. I’d like that, she told the wolves as she mounted Cloud. Thank you.

As the wolves melted into the trees beyond the village, Cloud fell into step with Numair’s horse, just behind the pretty black gelding the King’s Champion rode. A surprisingly sweet-natured horse, she thought, for such a cold man.

Cloud was eyeing the knight’s hands on his reins. If you let me get a little closer, she said to Daine, I could bite his wrist. It’s unprotected now that he’s taken those metal gloves off.

Don’t you dare, Daine replied. He answers directly to the king of this place.

What are kings to me? said Cloud loftily. Only more two-leggers wearing uncomfortable hats.

Daine struggled not to laugh nervously at that, as she followed the knights up the road to Dunlath Castle. She didn’t envy any of them their helms or mail coifs.

It was two weeks’ drive from Dunlath to Corus. When she learned that, Daine was reminded of a conversation she’d had over a year ago with a horse trader at the fair in Cría, on the day she met Sir Myles. She recalled the trader saying it would take nearly three weeks to drive the horses he’d bought south to the capital of Tusaine. The difference was that now they were driving people to Corus, not horses: nearly two hundred mercenaries, Lady Yolane, and two of the mages from the Carthaki University. Daine hated it.

There were plenty of horses to keep her company, at least. Most of them were warhorses belonging to the men of the Tortallan King’s Own, and she liked them. Sir Sacherell’s stallion Rowan was as friendly as his rider, who kept close to her and Numair during the long walk south, talking and joking with them.

She was curious about Lord Alexander’s horse, as two more days with him hadn’t sweetened her opinion of the King’s Champion. It wasn’t until the second night of their drive to Corus that she was able to speak privately with his gelding, who was grazing at the edge of their camp with the other horses.

Earlier that day, just before noon, one of the mercenary soldiers had somehow managed to free himself from the line of captives, dodge the warhorses’ hooves, and make a run for the trees lining the road. Riding with Numair just behind the knights, Daine had watched the King’s Champion calmly string his longbow, fit an arrow to the string, and shoot the man in the back. “You know, I counted the captives before we left,” remarked the Knight Commander of the King’s Own, a big man with graying hair.

“Revise your count,” the King’s Champion had replied, unstringing his bow.

Daine tried to put that memory from her head as she approached his horse that night, blowing into his nostrils to teach him her scent, but it nagged at her. If this was the Tortallan king’s representative, then what kind of man was the king?

She asked the pretty black gelding how his evening was going, and he replied that he was having a wonderful time. He liked the grazing in this meadow, and the leisurely pace of the journey south. The man had given him a sugar lump when they’d stopped for the night, and taken his time grooming him. Daine stroked the gelding’s neck as she listened to him talk, trying to keep her puzzlement to herself.

“That’s my horse,” said a voice from behind her.

She turned slowly. Lord Alexander stood there, arms folded over his chest and head cocked slightly to one side. In the dusk his expression was hard to read, but he seemed more curious than angry. She had noticed that when he wasn’t wearing full plate armor, the King’s Champion seemed to favor dark clothing; in his black gambeson and padded black breeches, he could easily sneak up on people after the sun went down.

“Are you talking to Halberd?” he asked her. “I’ve heard you can converse with any beast that walks, swims, or flies. Is it true?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said quietly.

“And you can heal them. Can you do anything else?”

“I can share their minds,” she admitted. “At Dunlath, I shared the mind of a cat in the castle, and spied on Tristan Staghorn and his co-conspirators.” She didn’t mention the partial transformations that had resulted from this new ability, until the badger had shown her how to control that, or the fact that Numair had told her he thought she could manage a full transformation very soon.

“Interesting. What’s my horse saying about me?” The gelding was sniffing at his belt pouches, clearly in search of something. Lord Alexander grinned, reached into a pouch, and produced an apple. “Don’t trust him, he’s spoiled rotten.”

That was the thing that had puzzled her. “He _loves_ you. He — what did you call him?” The word seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“Halberd. It’s a kind of polearm. Like an axe mounted on a longer shaft, with a hook opposite it, and a long spike on top. Very versatile weapon.”

She stared at Halberd, who was sniffing him all over, looking for more apples. “Forgive me for saying so, my lord, but it doesn’t really suit him.”

“Well, I’ve never been very good at naming things. Supper’s nearly ready,” he said, and pointed to a dark place between the trees beyond the edge of their campsite, where the ground seemed to dip down. “There’s a stream down there, if you want to wash up first.”

She could do with a wash; already she was looking forward to having a proper bath when they reached the capital. Making the best of things, she thought grimly. “Thank you, my lord,” she replied, trying not to scowl at him in the dim light. “I’d love to.”

He stayed with the horses, and as she headed down toward the stream, she could feel him watching her. As though she would try to run, and leave Numair and their horses behind. She shook her head, muttering, “At least he hasn’t put _us_ in chains. That’s chivalry for you, I suppose.”

But the man’s gelding adored him, and as she splashed her face with icy water, another memory occurred to her.

It had taken her over two hours to heal Flicker. His paw had nearly been severed in the fight at the southern fort, when he’d saved the huntsman Tait from a Stormwing. Daine managed to save the paw, but there was nothing she could do to ease the tenderness in the bone.

She had wanted Numair’s help, but he was tapped out after his fight with Tristan, which Sir Sacherell told her had culminated in Numair turning the man into a tree.

“He _never_ ,” she’d said, shocked, as they rode into the castle courtyard together with Lady Yolane in tow.

“Oh yes,” the knight had assured her. “Look, there’s the very tree, right there.”

Not long after she’d finished healing Flicker, Daine awoke to find herself sitting in a corner of the kitchen, propped up against a wall. Someone had placed a pillow behind her head, and there was a man talking softly. At first she’d thought it was Sir Sacherell. “It’s the dust that does it?” he was saying. “Not the flour itself?”

“Cook says it’s the dust,” said Lady Maura. “There has to be enough of it floating in the air to explode, and it helps if it’s in an enclosed space.”

Daine opened her eyes, puzzled, and saw Maura sitting at the kitchen table, drinking hot apple cider with the King’s Champion. The girl grinned when she saw Daine. “You’re awake! How are you feeling?”

“She lent you her pillow,” Lord Alexander informed her. He drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Mining dust.”

“What?” said Maura.

“It’s the same principle, isn’t it? You hear of mines exploding sometimes. Well, if you’re awake,” he said to Daine, “I’ll start readying the troops to go south.” He turned back to Maura, smiling. “Thank you. I’d heard of flour mills blowing up before, but never thought to wonder why.”

“What on earth were you talking about?” Daine had asked her, once the knight had left the room.

Now that she thought about it again, as she trudged back up the hill to the campsite, it wasn’t necessarily a point in Lord Alexander’s favor that she’d seen him having a pleasant conversation with Lady Maura. After all, Maura had managed to make friends with a Stormwing.

The sun was low in the sky when they crested the rise overlooking Corus, and the city was splashed with gold. Daine hadn’t wanted to be impressed when she saw the capital of Tortall for the first time, but nonetheless her breath caught in her throat. It was even bigger than Cría had been, and beautiful in the warm light of late afternoon.

The city lay nestled in a valley, encircled by a wall and cut in half by a gleaming river. To the west the ground rose again; the streets leading up the hill were lined with estates and temples. On the highest ground, overlooking the city, stood a castle shielded by high walls, shining pale gold in the sunlight.

Their party followed the road around the city to a bridge over a deep moat, where the palace wall was only ten feet high. It was manned by guards wearing maroon and beige, who waved them across the bridge. Beyond the gate lay the small town that served the palace, where the air smelled of molten metal, cows, and baking. Daine breathed it in, suddenly fiercely homesick for Cría.

The King’s Champion dismounted, handing Halberd’s reins to a hostler, and then turned back to Sir Sacherell and the Knight Commander of the King’s Own. “You’ll take the captives? Roger asked me to report to him the second I got back to Corus.”

“Of course,” replied Sacherell. “Better you than me. I always get queasy talking to royalty.”

Lord Alexander chuckled, and then turned to Numair and Daine. “This way, if you please. You can leave your mounts here.”

As she followed him across the palace grounds, properly stretching out her legs for the first time in several hours, Daine saw more wonders. Beyond the little town just inside the gate loomed the different wings and turrets of the palace, with different building styles telling of additions over the centuries. There was as much glass here as there had been at the palace in Cría, or perhaps even more, glinting like rubies now in the light of the setting sun.

They entered the palace via a long corridor lined with tapestries depicting what Daine took to be important battles in Tortallan history. Numair nudged her gently. “This is a roundabout way to the dungeon,” he murmured, the corners of his mouth twitching up into a grim smile. “Nice of him to take the scenic route.”

Daine heard a sigh from just ahead of them: the King’s Champion had overheard. “ _Mages_ ,” he muttered.

He led them to the antechamber of a small audience room, where a few palace servants waited. The maid standing there shut her eyes for a moment when she saw Daine, before tackling the problem of trying to do something about her hair and travel-stained clothes.

When they were all a little tidier, the door to the audience room swung open, and a herald wearing red and gold announced their presence. Daine was glad that Sir Myles had taught her how to greet a king and queen properly. Without stumbling, she bowed correctly to them, and not a fraction of an inch lower.

They made a lovely pair, she had to admit. The king of Tortall was about fifty, a few years younger than the king of Galla, and in his youth he must have been very handsome. There was only a touch of gray in his dark hair and trim beard, which made him look distinguished to her eyes. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his eyes were a striking shade of blue. He had chosen to wear blue to complement them: a dark blue tunic with silver embroidery over a bright aquamarine shirt, dark blue hose, tall black boots, and an array of sapphire jewelry that glittered in the torchlight.

The king smiled pleasantly at her. He had the kind of smile that made you feel like you were the only other person in the room when it was turned on you. With it turned on her, Daine felt her cheeks starting to turn red, and gritted her teeth. If Sir Myles doesn’t trust him, she thought, then neither do I.

Beside him sat the queen. As far away as Cría, Daine had heard talk of her great beauty, and the talk wasn’t wrong. She was even lovelier than the queen of Galla, in her cream-colored gown and green brocade surcoat. Her chestnut hair caught the light, glinting richly under a gold net dotted with pearls. When she noticed Daine gazing up at her, she smiled gently.

Daine kept her own expression neutral, wondering whether these two ever did anything besides smile at each other until their teeth hurt.

“So you’re the one they call the Wildmage,” said the king. His voice was a light, musical tenor, a voice made for telling jokes. “But we’re told you prefer to go by Daine.”

“That’s right, Your Majesty,” she said, grateful when her voice didn’t shake.

“We owe an immense debt to you both,” he said, covering the queen’s hand with his. She glanced down at their joined hands, and then smiled blandly again. “Without you and Master Salmalín, Tortall would have suffered unimaginable devastation. Although we imagine you may wish to return to Galla soon, we invite you both to make your home here for as long as you desire. Will you each accept, with our thanks, a grant of nobility and the deeds to lands along the western coast of Tortall?”

Daine stared at him, horrified. She glanced at Numair, whose expression was unreadable. “Thank you, Your Majesties,” he said quietly. “We accept.”

She had to say something. “Your Majesty, it’s very kind, but — I went to Dunlath to help the wolves, not for lands or titles or — ”

Numair’s elbow dug, very gently, into her shoulder, and she fell silent. The king was smiling again, looking amused. “Sir Myles did say something to that effect,” he admitted. “Now, we imagine you’re both tired after your long journey, and would like to rest. There is a banquet tonight. The queen and I would be honored if you were to attend. For now, one of the servants will show you to your rooms.”

Feeling numb, Daine bowed to them again, and then followed Numair out through the antechamber into the corridor beyond, leaving the King’s Champion behind with the king and queen.

“I understand your feelings, magelet,” murmured Numair, after the door to the antechamber had shut behind them. “But when a king tries to give you a present, don’t refuse. Not to his face, anyway.”

“But I don’t want to stay in Tortall,” she protested. “And I don’t want to be a noble. I was happy where I was.”

“Indeed. But that’s the trouble with stopping a treasonous plot, I’m afraid — afterward, the king is going to want to thank you.” He smiled at her, rather sadly. “Try to get some rest before the banquet. I’m sure we’ll both feel better after a nap.”

The banquet in Corus was very different from the dinner at Dunlath Castle, where Daine had been seated at the far end of the dining hall with Lady Maura. In Corus, she was seated at a small table close to the dais where the king and queen sat, with Numair and a few other mages.

By the time the first subtlety was brought out, between the first and second courses, Daine was tired of talking to anyone. She let Numair carry the conversation, sharing bits of her dinner with a mouse who had crawled up into her lap. The mouse, evidently, enjoying living in Tortall. His life at the palace was, for the most part, a very pleasant one. Daine couldn’t relate.

One of the pages appeared behind her, carrying a dish of boar meat roasted in apples and honey. “My lady?” he said, offering some to her, and she flinched. Only a few weeks ago, Yolane of Dunlath had been snidely calling her Mistress Sarrasri, pointedly emphasizing Ma’s name in hers. It felt downright wrong for people to call her a lady now.

But that wasn’t the page’s fault, she realized. He couldn’t be much older than twelve, and he looked pale and nervous to be standing so close to the king’s table. “Thank you,” she said, smiling at him. “What’s your name?”

He swallowed, his hand shaking slightly as he laid a slice of roast boar on her plate. “Duncan of Aili, my lady.”

“I’m not a lady,” she replied. “Well — not really. Where’s Aili?”

“Near Stone Mountain.”

She had no idea where that was. There were maps pinned to the walls of Sir Myles’s office, back home in Cría, but when she tried to recall their details, Tortall was just a hazy blur. “Is that anywhere near Fief Dunlath?” she asked.

“About two days’ ride. They’re all close to the Scanran border.”

She nodded, letting him escape to serve the guest beside her, a young mage from the City of the Gods whose name she had already forgotten.

A ballroom bordered on the great hall, and after a final course of brightly-colored jellies and sugared plums, they were allowed to get up and wander into it. Daine trailed after Numair and the other mages, intending to retreat to a corner as soon as she could, to watch the Tortallan lords and ladies. She wanted to go back to her room, but the king would have considered that an insult. Besides, she didn’t think she could even manage to find her room on her own.

She knew one thing clearly: they weren’t guests of the king, not really. They were hostages. She had said as much to Numair after they had been shown to their rooms. First she had watched to see where the footman placed him, and after she’d been left alone in her room for a few minutes, she crept down the corridor to find Numair and tell him her thoughts.

“You’re not entirely wrong,” he said when she had finished. “The nobility _does_ take hostages, and not infrequently. They usually call it fostering, though, or a marriage treaty. It’s that way in Carthak, too.”

She had raised her eyebrows at him. “A marriage treaty?”

“They’re all of a piece to the rich and powerful,” he explained. “A nobleman wants to keep an eye on his enemy, so he offers to foster one of his enemy’s children. Or he arranges for one of them to marry his own child, and takes the young bride or groom into his own household to live there until the wedding.”

“That’s barbaric,” said Daine. In Snowsdale people had married because they’d wanted to, not because one’s parents wanted to strike at their enemies. “What are we going to do?”

“Well,” he replied, smiling slightly, “I managed to break out of one dungeon already. And now we have each other, so I expect we’ll have better odds.”

She stared at him. “You broke out of a _dungeon_? When?”

“I’ll tell you the story later,” he had promised her.

She would have to remind him, she thought, as she weaved through the crowds streaming into the ballroom. Things often slipped Numair’s mind for a time, sometimes returning only long after the fact. It was up to her to keep him straightforward.

At the far end of the room, a wall of glass-paned doors stood open, leading out into the gardens. Daine took up a position beside one of them, sipping warm cider and enjoying the brisk night air. She could feel animals in the distance, roaming the gardens and the Royal Forest somewhere nearby, and their presence comforted her.

After a few minutes, Numair located her. “Ah, I was wondering where you’d gone,” he said, relief on his face. “Have a look over there. See that man the king is talking to?”

She glanced up, and saw King Roger standing at the opposite end of the room, holding a drink of some kind and talking with a red-haired man wearing black-and-gold mage robes. “Who’s that?” she asked, frowning. “He’s not another black robe, is he?”

“Good guess,” said Numair, “but no. That’s Lord Thom of Trebond.”

“He’s wearing black,” she pointed out.

“Ah. Masters from the City of the Gods wear those colors,” he explained. “It’s the equivalent of a red robe from Carthak. We’ve standardized our conventions between universities to a point — but only to a point. Of course, he does have the right to wear a red robe, if he wants.”

“I suppose it would clash with his hair.”

Numair smiled at that. “From what I’ve heard, he _could_ have been a black robe, if he’d wanted. Instead he wanted to get things over with quickly, evidently. He’s the youngest Master of the Mithran Light in over eighty years. He left the City of the Gods at eighteen and came to work for the king.”

She stared at him. “Eighteen?”

“Apparently about four months ago, a wyvern attacked the northern wall of this palace,” he replied. “What I did to the bloodrain at Fief Dunlath, Lord Thom over there did to the wyvern.”

Her eyes widened further. “He just — pop? To a _wyvern_?”

“Pop,” agreed Numair. “He’s very good friends with the king, or so I’ve been told. Did you know that Roger is starting a university here in Corus? Apparently Lord Thom came up with the idea for it, after spending some time in Carthak a few years ago.”

“You’re saying he’s someone to keep my eye on,” she said.

“Precisely. There are a few mages here you’ll want to keep an eye on, and he’s near the top of the list.” He gazed across the ballroom, looking thoughtful. “I’d do it from a distance, though, if I were you. He has a reputation for hating almost everyone else at court.”

He smiled suddenly, and Daine noticed the direction of his gaze: a blonde woman standing a few feet away, at the edge of a cluster of noblewomen, smiling rather significantly at Numair. She frowned.

“Daine,” he said, “would you mind terribly if I —?”

“Be my guest,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Go ahead and dance with every noblewoman you like. Have fun.” With her luck, he’d fall madly in love with one of them and then they would both be stuck in Tortall forever.

“Thank you,” he replied cheerfully. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything interesting from her.”

As he walked away, Daine took another sip of her cider, which had gone cold. She gazed over at Thom of Trebond again, watching him gesture extravagantly as he said something to the king. Were they talking of wyverns? She decided they were, and that Lord Thom was explaining how big it had been. King Roger was impressed, and then disappointed that Lord Thom had sent it away: he had wanted to make the wyvern a duke.

The minutes ticked by slowly. After a little while, the dance ended; as the musicians struck up a different, livelier tune, she watched Numair turn, smiling, to a second noblewoman and say something to her. The noblewoman laughed. “Unbelievable,” Daine murmured. “He’s actually having a good time here.”

“Are you the mage who can heal animals?” someone whispered to her.

It was a girl’s voice. Daine turned around, startled, and saw a child of about nine or ten standing in the doorway to the garden.

Her dark hair had been braided and pinned in a circlet around her head, from which tendrils were already escaping. She wore a blue gown that matched her eyes, the same rich blue as the king’s tunic. Daine tensed, recognizing her from the banquet hall dais. “Yes, Your Highness,” she replied uneasily.

“Good,” said the princess. “There’s a bat out here with a torn wing. I think an owl savaged him. I was going to pick him up and bring him inside, but Father says wounded animals usually bite. Lady Corina screamed when she saw him, but she’s a coward. Will you come help him?”

“Of course,” said Daine, following her outside. She took a deep breath, trying to force her muscles to relax.

“My name is Jessamine,” said the princess, as they walked along the garden path, “but most people call me Jess. Well, most of my family calls me Jess. My brothers do, anyway, and Father and Uncle Alex and my cousins. Sometimes Mama does too, though she thinks it sounds undignified. What’s your name?”

The night air blew colder out in the garden, and smelled of woodsmoke and the coming of winter. “Veralidaine Sarrasri,” she replied, deciding she’d refuse to use her new title unless she was forced to. “I go by Daine. Where’s this injured lad you’re taking me to?”

“Here.” The princess stepped off the path, ducking down beside a rosebush.

Daine knelt beside her. The bat was on the ground, his left wing in tatters. Poor fellow, she said, gently lifting him up and placing him in her lap. What happened?

His breathing was shallow as he confirmed the princess’s suspicions: he’d run into an owl in a foul mood. Daine shut her eyes, going to work as Jessamine watched her, fascinated. One of the bat’s bones was cracked, but most of what she had to repair was tissue damage. She burned off the infection in his wounds, and then got to work knitting muscles, ligaments, and tendons back together. When the skin that covered his wing was healed again, she opened her eyes to find she’d dripped sweat onto him.

As he flew away, promising her that he’d be more careful with owls in the future, the princess sighed wistfully. “I wish I could heal. Gavain can, and Jon at least can light candles without blowing them up. But the only useful thing I can do is weather magic, and Father says I can’t even do _that_ because I’ll disrupt global weather patterns if I’m not careful.”

Daine remembered Numair once telling her that he had to light candles without magic, because they exploded when he used his Gift. “Are you a mage, then, Your Highness?”

“Oh, don’t Highness me, please. Yes, I am. That’s one reason I have to go live in the City of the Gods next year, instead of becoming a page like my brothers.”

“I didn’t know girls could be pages,” said Daine.

Jessamine grinned. “They certainly can. Father changed the law last year. Only they won’t let me be one, because I’m the princess and a mage. I wish I wasn’t. I overheard a rumor recently that one day I’m going to have to go live in Carthak, and marry the emperor’s heir.”

Daine winced, recalling what Numair had said earlier about marriage treaties and hostages.

“There’s mud on our skirts,” Jessamine observed, as they got to their feet. “One of my nursemaids tried to teach me a spell to get mud out of cloth once, but I’m afraid it didn’t take. You don’t know any, do you?”

Daine shook her head. “That’s not my type of magic. Sorry.” She followed the princess back down the path toward the ballroom.

Jessamine shrugged. “Oh well. Father says I don’t need to learn any housekeeping magic anyway. He says it’s beneath us. Of course, Mama’s going to be furious when she sees my dress, but I’ll just tell her we were saving a life. How did you learn to heal animals?”

“Numair taught me. He taught me most of the magic I know.”

“He’s on the run, isn’t he, from the emperor in Carthak?”

Daine looked at her, startled. “Who told you that?”

“My brother Jon,” she replied, meeting Daine’s eyes evenly. “He overheard Uncle Alex saying something to Father about it.”

“Who’s Uncle Alex?”

“Why, Father’s Champion, of course,” said Jessamine, looking surprised. “I thought you rode south with him from Dunlath.”

Daine frowned, trying to picture that cold man in battered armor being someone’s kindly uncle. What sort of presents did he bring home for his nieces and nephews — other people’s heads? “What did he say to your father?”

She cocked her head slightly, looking thoughtful. “‘Sooner or later Ozorne’s going to notice you poaching his mages,’ I believe it was,” she said, and then smiled wryly. “The grownups are playing their favorite game again. I believe they call it politics.”

“There are far better games,” said Daine. She tucked that information about Ozorne away, to pass on to Numair later. “So, what does a King’s Champion actually do, anyway?”

“It’s his job to defend the throne if it needs defending,” Jessamine explained, as they slipped unnoticed into the ballroom. “And to represent it — that’s why Father sent him to Fief Dunlath to deal with the traitors. It’s mostly a ceremonial post these days, but Father trusts him with his life. Uncle Alex is the best swordsman in all of Tortall.”

“Is he really your uncle?”

She shook her head. One of the palace squires stopped in front of them, and she reached for a cup of cider from the tray he held. “He’s our godsfather, though, and I’ve known him since I was born. He used to be Father’s squire, when he was a boy.” She passed Daine a second cup from the tray.

Daine tried to picture Lord Alexander as a boy of her own age, and couldn’t. “I don’t have anyone left who I’ve known for that long,” she confessed.

Jessamine looked up at her, her blue eyes filled with a sudden sorrow. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said Daine automatically.

Jessamine smiled again, trying to cheer her. “Well, you’re here now, with Master Numair, and I know Father’s very glad to have you. You’ll like being at court, I’m sure. You meet all kinds of interesting people here, a lot of other mages, and there are so many libraries.” Something about her litany of entertainments reminded Daine of Maura, telling her just before she’d left the castle that she wished she and Numair could stay for longer, because winters at Dunlath were so beautiful.

“Well, I’ll give it a try,” said Daine, trying to hide her dismay as she gazed around the ballroom again. The musicians were still playing, the nobles still dancing, the squires still slowly circling the room with their serving trays. It was as though she’d never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding Thom and the wyvern: at some point much, much later, it will be mentioned that the wyvern attacked around dawn, and Thom essentially showed up to the fight in his pajamas, still half asleep and really pissed off.
> 
> While revising this scene, I had a brief existential crisis regarding the color of his robes. According to the Tamora Pierce wiki, robe colors are standardized between universities by this point in the timeline; this appears to be the convention in the later books as well. But when we meet Si-cham in _In the Hand of the Goddess_ , he's described as wearing "the black-and-gold robes of a master." This discrepancy isn't what caused the existential crisis, though — it's the fact that at some point during the planning stage of this story, I had apparently hallucinated Thom wearing these robes as well, and was very surprised to find out this very week that it never happens in canon. I have combed the Alanna books and cannot find a single mention of the specific color of Thom's robes, though at one point in _Lioness Rampant_ he's described as wearing a robe (though not specifically a mage's robe) with "bright colors," whatever that means exactly. Anyway, I gave him Si-cham's black-and-gold robes and came up with the explanation Numair gives Daine to handwave away the confusion.
> 
> Several lines of dialogue here are, of course, taken from _Wolf-Speaker_. The part of me that strongly suspects every decent line of dialogue I come up with is actually stolen from somewhere else is also pretty convinced that I accidentally plagiarized Alex's "Revise your count" line from something, but I may just be thinking of the vaguely similar scene from _Mulan_. Or it's from some half-remembered episode of _Game of Thrones_ , who even knows.
> 
> I realize that I've gotten most of my ideas about weather magic from Emelan, but I've chosen to assume the same rules apply to Tortall.


	10. Lord Thom

**453 H.E.**

The second time Kel felt certain she was about to be expelled for fighting was a few weeks after Midwinter, the night after a heavy snowstorm. She had been wandering the palace corridors with Neal when they stumbled across Joren and his friends, who were indulging in an activity they liked: pushing the first-years down the stairs.

Joren froze, smiling slightly when he saw her. “Oh look, the Provost’s Guard is here.”

Kel sighed. “Don’t you have homework you could be doing?”

When Vinson threw the first punch, their victim for that evening, Quinden of Marti’s Hill, took the opportunity to make his escape. They were dangerously close to the teachers’ quarters, so the rest of them crept quietly down the stairs, and then the fight began in earnest.

With two against three, they were almost evenly matched. Within a couple of minutes, Kel’s knuckles were scraped from Joren’s teeth, and her cheek throbbed from a punch she hadn’t quite managed to dodge. She ducked away from Garvey’s fist, grabbing his arm before he could regroup, and let his momentum carry him over her hip. He had just hit the floor when everything stopped.

She could move, but only with extreme effort, like trying to get up and walk around after a very serious healing. A figure was approaching in her peripheral vision. She managed to turn her head just enough, in time to see a slim, red-haired man stalking toward them from the direction of the staircase. His face was flushed, and his pale eyes burned with rage.

“I am in the midst of a _very_ important working, and you were on the verge of disrupting it with your petty juvenile squabbles. If any of you little barbarians had thrown even one more punch, the palace might have started to come down around our ears! _Do_ you even — I have half a mind to leave you all like this for the rest of the night,” he added, his voice going suddenly quiet.

Lord Wyldon would be very cross, thought Kel, if the mage didn’t release them. After another moment of staring at them, the mage seemed to realize this, and decide that he didn’t want to be subjected to Lord Wyldon’s wrath as well. He waved his arm. Kel took an experimental step backwards, and found she could move at normal speed again.

“Before you run along — slowly, carefully — I want your names,” said the mage in friendlier tones. “I’m going to report you to your training master. And don’t try to lie to me, because I’ll know.”

Neal spoke up first. He released Vinson from the headlock he’d put him in, brushed off his tunic, and said, “Nealan of Queenscove, Lord Thom. I was in your class, back in November.”

The mage frowned. “Were you?” He nodded to Vinson, who was glowering at Neal. “You next.”

“Vinson of Genlith,” he mumbled.

The mage’s eyes lighted on Joren, who stood off to the side with his hands clasped behind his back. “Joren of Stone Mountain,” he said coolly. “You know, my lord, we were only defending ourselves from her and her friend.”

“The reasoning behind your petty squabbles does not concern me,” said Lord Thom, cutting him off. “You there on the floor, what’s your name?”

Garvey got to his feet, avoiding the mage’s eyes. “Garvey of Runnerspring, my lord.”

Kel stood comfortably at attention, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Keladry of Mindelan,” she said, when Lord Thom turned to her.

He frowned again, as though puzzled, and then his pale eyes widened. They weren’t blue, she realized suddenly; they were purple, which she hadn’t thought was possible. As she stared into his eyes, the weight of the day began to settle on her, like a heavy down blanket. She hadn’t realized until now how exhausted she was. Had he enchanted them again? The prospect of taking a single step seemed like an insurmountable effort, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Lord Thom blinked, and she was free, strength returning to her limbs. “Run along now,” he said quietly. “If I catch you or any of your little friends brawling near my office again, I’ll turn you all into fish.”

He turned away in a swirl of black-and-gold mage robes and stalked back up the stairs. Kel and Neal watched him until he was out of sight. Joren, Vinson, and Garvey had run away the moment the mage’s back was turned.

“He can’t really do that, can he?” asked Kel softly. “Turn us into fish, I mean. That only happens in stories.”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “I think it’s safe to assume Lord Thom can do just about anything he wants, if he’s angry enough. He’s probably the most powerful mage in Tortall. Don’t tell the king I said that, though.”

Suspicion solidified into certainty. “Lord Thom of _Trebond_ ,” she said. “Isn’t he . . . he’s her brother, isn’t he?”

“Twin brother,” Neal agreed. “They’re supposed to be estranged.”

“Are they?” she wondered. And what did Lord Thom think of Kel, who could train as a page and still go by her real name, who might succeed where his sister had failed? Well, I probably won’t succeed _now_ , she thought, gloom settling over her. He had said he would report them to Lord Wyldon, who could use Lord Thom’s word that they’d been fighting as an excuse to expel her. It was the second time she’d been caught, and now she’d upset a mage.

“Well, the king seems to think so. He trusts him enough to let him run the new university, anyway. Which is a funny thing, really.”

“The university?” said Kel, who didn’t know much about it beyond the barest facts.

“No, the trust. Powerful mages are often like cats: very particular about each other. The City of the Gods was a hotbed of little cat scuffles. And my father says the king was known for having very sharp claws in his youth. But somehow those two manage to work together.”

“Maybe they’re friends,” suggested Kel.

“Maybe, but my money’s on blackmail. I wonder what he has on the king.” Neal gave her a sympathetic pat on the back, as they headed back to his room to rejoin the study group. “Lord Thom’s very busy these days, with the university. He might get distracted by whatever he’s doing and forget all about us. Scholars are funny like that. He was an absolute disaster of a teacher, you know — always forgetting something, always irritated with us.”

Back in Neal’s room, Kel threw herself into her mathematics homework, trying to help her friends through a particularly difficult problem. She gave her history paper to Faleron to look over, and struggled through a poem Master Yayin had assigned. More than once, she caught herself reading the same line twice without grasping any of its meaning. The minutes ticked by, but nobody came to summon them to Lord Wyldon’s office.

“I think he forgot,” said Neal, when the bell rang to signify it was time for bed.

“Maybe,” she said, though she didn’t think so. Lord Thom had struck her as the sort of person who held grudges.

But the next day passed without a summons, and by bedtime Kel had started to relax. “The Stump doesn’t know,” said Neal at one point, as they puzzled over a chapter on Tortallan law. “If he knew, we would have been called to his office long before now.”

“Know what?” said Merric. “Is this about that split lip you had last night, and Kel’s black eye?”

“It’s hardly a black eye,” said Kel. “I’ve had much worse.”

Seaver shook his head. “That’s the problem. You’ve had so many black eyes you can rank them.”

“I’m telling you,” said Neal, “Thom just forgot all about us.”

“Maybe he’s just biding his time,” she replied. “Lord Wyldon isn’t the type of person who would wait and hold this over our heads, but Lord Thom might be.”

Jasson groaned. “Gods, what have you gone and done now, to annoy a mage? Kel, am I on the right track here with this catapult problem?”

After another two days, she was forced to conclude that Thom of Trebond might have forgotten about the fight after all. When she and Neal resumed their patrols that night, they were joined for the first time by the rest of the study group. She turned to look at them, surprised.

“We’re going to keep you two out of trouble,” said Merric, punching her lightly on the shoulder and grinning. Kel smiled at him.

There was no sign of Joren and his cronies that night, and the staircase near the teachers’ quarters was deserted. That night, Kel slept more easily than she had in several days.

**451 H.E.**

It was a warm night for early March in Port Caynn, the kind of night where great gusts of wind alternately blew seaspray and scattered rain, and George Cooper sat in a shadowy corner of the Merman’s Cave listening to a very rude song about the king. He was halfway through a tankard of ale when the door to the street opened again, letting in a damp chill, and a hooded figure sat down across from him.

“Well?” said Thom of Trebond.

Ducking his head to mask his grin a little, George busied himself with retrieving the letter from inside his tunic. He passed it across the table to Thom, who wore a billowing black cloak that hid his face and his bright hair, making him look like the villain in a bad play.

“You know, lad, a secret meeting’s not too secret if you’re dressed like one of the Black God’s priests. People tend to take notice of hooded strangers.”

Rolling his eyes, Thom broke the plain seal on the envelope, slid out the letter from his sister, and began to read. Right away, he seemed to forget that anyone else was even there, so George took the opportunity to order them each a bowl of seafood soup and some more ale. Thom hardly seemed to notice the barmaid who came and went. His purple eyes were fixed on the letter, a faint smile twitching around the corners of his mouth. George watched him for a while, feeling vaguely jealous.

“I’ll have a reply for you in the morning,” said Thom finally, folding the letter up again and putting it away somewhere beneath his cloak. He frowned at the bowl of soup the returning barmaid set down in front of him, as though puzzled by it, and then turned his attention toward the man playing the lute in the opposite corner of the room. The musician was singing a new song now, about a gallant highwayman. “Wasn’t he slandering Roger when I walked in?”

George raised his tankard, toasting him with a grin. “If you liked that tune, I could give him some coin and he’ll likely play it again.”

He shuddered, and George couldn’t tell whether it was a reaction to the song or to what lurked in the depths of his soup. A lock of shoulder-length hair had escaped the horsetail he wore it in; Thom tucked it behind his ear and began poking at the bowl of soup with his spoon, showing no interest in actually tasting it. “There’s no need to trouble yourself on my account. Is this — have I just discovered a new type of squid? Though I must say, this is a step up from meeting at an actual dockyard like we did last time. Gods only knew what those sailors thought I was doing there. Tell me, what is this place called again?”

“The Merman’s Cave. Didn’t you see the sign when you walked in?”

“Mm, so fanciful,” he said, with a rather brittle smile. “What I really meant was, what is this part of Port Caynn called? Where are we precisely?”

“Ah. Lowdown.”

“What a cute nickname. No wonder I felt so safe walking over here.”

“You should,” said George. “Anyone tries to rob you, you can just set them on fire with your mind. Besides, it’s not so bad here anymore. These days, Ladyslipper is the real slum.”

“How comforting. Are we going to be meeting there next?”

George smiled. As the years went by, his urge to needle Thom during their sporadic meetings had gradually increased. Alanna didn’t write to George as often as she once had, but he still passed her letters to Thom along, and dutifully sent the replies to Myles, along with information from Port Caynn, where he was living now, and secondhand tales from his agents in Corus.

Over the years, as he’d lost interest in local politics in favor of the international shadow network over which Myles presided, it had made sense to abdicate his throne, letting his friend Marek take it. It had been the most peaceful transition of power in the Court of the Rogue in living memory. In retrospect, he should have foreseen that turn in his life; more than once, as a young man, he’d had idle daydreams of giving up his throne and going off to live with Alanna in the countryside.

In Alanna’s defense, he didn’t write to her as often as he once had, either, but he still felt a pang of regret sometimes, when he looked at Thom and saw his hair gleaming like fire in the lamplight.

Thom was not usually a font of useful information, but George wasn’t about to give up on him. At the very least, he could be entertaining. George cocked his head, listening more closely to the lute player. “Ah, it’s a song about Gentleman Jack Weaver. You know, I once met the man in Blue Harbor, before they hanged him, and he never _really_ laid his coat down for the ladies before he robbed them.”

“What?”

“To protect their slippers from the mud. I’ll wager it’s the same way when they sing about the king. Most of the lyrics are outrageous lies, but occasionally there’s a sliver of truth in there. Of course, you’d know better than I what’s true and what’s false. Are you still sleeping with him, by the way, or is that one of the falsehoods?”

Thom stirred his soup again slowly, frowning into the depths of it. “Fairly certain there’s a piece of fishing net in here. This is why I never leave the palace if I can help it. I’m cold and tired in a place called Lowdown, with only one spare set of clothes on my person, and now I’m eating detritus from the bay so that I don’t starve.”

He was courting accusations of treason as well, as was George, but neither of them liked to talk about that. “Well, if you’re not willing to gossip about your private life, at least tell me —”

“ _Still_ sleeping with him? Really, George? That’s like asking me whether I’m still beating my children. How am I supposed to answer that?”

“It’s not, really,” said George with a shrug. “You don’t have any children.”

Thom smiled unpleasantly at him. “Trebonds have such unfortunate taste in men, don’t they? It’s been that way for generations, and you should know — didn’t you have some kind of romantic entanglement with my sister, at one point or another? Must be something in the blood.”

If that had been an attempt to wound him, George had to admit it had at least grazed the mark. Even now, so many years after his chance at winning Alanna’s heart had come and gone, remembering how he’d lost her still pricked at him. “Well, I can’t say I’m honored, to be included in the same category as the king.”

“No? Weren’t you a king yourself once?”

“As I saying, at least tell me some of the goings-on at the palace. Give me some news to send to Myles. How’s your pack of mages holding up?”

Thom’s eyes flashed. “Funny you should call them that, because he’s done it again. The Council of Mages has yet another brand new Lord High Chancellor. Huzzah, huzzah, let the bells ring out.”

“That’s bad, is it?” George was glad he had other agents in Corus, because when Thom brought him news, it was usually fussy, vaguely bureaucratic stuff about mages backstabbing one another very politely.

“Yes, because it’s me.”

“Ah. _Your_ pack of mages.” No wonder Thom looked like a cornered rat. If he was in the spotlight, it wouldn’t be long before he was out of favor with Roger. Nobody lasted long at the top of the Council of Mages, these days. Most of the former Lord High Chancellors had merely seen their careers take a downhill turn after displeasing Roger somehow; but one of them, Almar of Hannalof, had also suffered an unexpected and fatal illness shortly after declining to pass a law the king had supported. “You didn’t try to refuse the position?”

The look on Thom’s face would have withered the spirit of a younger, less secure man. “You’re right, what a fool I was. After all, Roger’s always been known for his ability to gracefully accept the word ‘no.’ It’s all right, though, I’ll figure out a way to get out of it.”

George raised an eyebrow. “What’s the plan, then, Thommy?”

Thom tasted his soup for the first time, and grimaced. “You’ve heard of the new university in Corus? We haven’t settled on a name yet, but I’d bet good money we’ll end up naming it after Roger somehow. King’s University, perhaps. Or worse, Roger University.” A smile spread slowly over his narrow face. “Can you imagine? I’m going to suggest that one to him and see if it sticks.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Good, the news is spreading. Well, it was largely my idea. I’ve been whispering into Roger’s ear about it for nearly four years now, ever since I got back from studying in Carthak. Civilized capital cities have universities, I kept telling him. They’re so modern, so enlightened. Centuries from now, I told him, our descendants will be praising him for making Tortall a center of learning once more, between the City of the Gods and his very own university. It’s paid off; he’s put me in charge.”

“It’s going to be difficult for you,” said George, “leading the Council of Mages and trying to start a brand new university at the same time.”

Thom smiled, evidently glad he’d caught on. “Precisely. In a few weeks, I expect I’ll have a humiliating, very public breakdown in front of the Council of Mages. And later that day, I expect to find myself crying onto the king’s shoulder, wailing to him about all the stress I’ve been under.”

“That’s your plan? I can see a potential flaw in it.”

His smile faded. “It’s an idea. Why, what’s wrong with it? I _know_ Roger; he can be very susceptible to pretty shows of vulnerability.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Unlike Alanna, George had never seen a monster when he’d looked at Roger, riding through the city at a distance on his fine horses, wearing his fine clothes. He had only seen a man, albeit a very dangerous one, and men were susceptible to all kinds of things. “Trouble is, I know _you_ well enough to wager you can’t stand being vulnerable in front of anyone.”

Thom was quiet for a long moment, his expressive face unusually still. “That’s why it’s going to work.”

After a certain point, George knew, you had to let a man dig his own grave, if that’s what he wanted to do. It was a shame, really. He’d grown strangely fond of Thom over the years. There had been a period at the beginning of their partnership when he hadn’t been sure exactly how Thom was still alive, but then he’d gotten used to his presence, and gradually started to enjoy it.

Unlike many of his other agents, Thom had been the one to approach him, saying that he wanted to make an arrangement: if George kept ferrying letters between him and his sister, he would keep an eye on Roger and his inner circle for whatever little spy ring George happened to be running for Sir Myles.

“Are you sure?” George recalled asking him. “That’s going to be very dangerous for you.”

Thom had rolled his eyes at that, and replied, “I played the idiot for the better part of a decade in a revolving cesspit of backstabbing mages and Roger’s spies. I think I’ll be all right.”

And so he had been, until now. In retrospect, it made sense: Thom was indeed a very intelligent man, and he had evidently realized, upon arriving at court all those years ago, that he needed to learn how to play Roger’s game fast, and very well.

Fortunately for Thom, self-preservation had been a factor on Roger’s side as well: the man had wanted to keep his throne, curse him, and so he had learned how to work with other people, even other powerful mages. According to Thom, there had been a few years early on when Roger had tried to insist upon doing all the flashy and important magic in the kingdom himself — until stress and exhaustion had resulted in him catching a very bad cold back in the winter of 442. After that, he had started giving his Council of Mages something to do besides twiddle their thumbs and occasionally repair the purification spells on the palace wells and protection spells on the palace walls. For George, who had initially hoped for a speedy and explosive end to Roger’s reign, it was maddening.

But now something had gone awry, and the king had evidently decided that Thom was expendable. George suspected that Roger didn’t like him getting so much attention for the new university. Or perhaps the king had actually managed to deceive himself into thinking that becoming Lord High Chancellor was a good thing, and this was his misguided way of trying to reward Thom. Sometimes it was hard to say precisely what was going on inside the king’s head.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to another song, this one about how little the prime minister’s youngest child resembled him. “There’s a song about me, isn’t there?” asked Thom.

“Not _a_ song, precisely,” said George, who could think of three songs, just off the top of his head, that mentioned Lord Trebond either by name, or by a rude nickname by which he was fairly well known in the seedier parts of Port Caynn. His favorite of them was probably the one about the arcane and obscene magical rituals he and the king got up to on Beltane, which featured some very clever wordplay and one entirely improbable use for a jeweled magic wand. George tried to keep it alive in the taverns, in the hopes that one day the king would hear it somewhere and have a minor apoplexy.

Vicious slander about the king always warmed his heart on cold nights, as did remembering his friend Gary’s rants about Thom’s conduct in meetings of the Council of Lords. Every six months or so, they met for drinks in Corus, and after a few tankards of ale George liked to lead him around to that subject.

Thom winced, as though George had started singing one of the songs about him out loud. “You wouldn’t know it, from all the gossip there is about the nobility, but I actually lead a very dull life. I spend most of my time reading.” He drummed his fingers on the table, and George caught sight of the ruby ring on his hand, inherited from the previous Lord Trebond, briefly visible when the sleeve of his cloak slipped back. What a strange thing it would be, he thought, to be noble and rich, and so convinced you were just like everyone else.

“Let’s see,” Thom continued, “I’ve told you the business about the Council of Mages, and I’m sure Myles will be interested to hear that plans for the university continue apace. It’s a shame he isn’t here to see them unfold. What else? There’s really nothing new with that girl — the Wildmage, they’re calling her. She and that ridiculously tall black robe mage have settled into court life, and Roger is absolutely delighted to have them, although the palace animals have started acting a bit peculiar since they arrived. Everyone enjoyed the Midwinter festivities immensely — including the animals, I think. Though she’s a bit older than them, the girl’s friendly with the princess and the crown prince, who are very fond of her. As far as anyone can tell, she’s perfectly happy and doesn’t even want to go back to Galla.”

“As far as anyone can tell,” George repeated, amused. “You’ve never actually spoken to her, have you?”

“Not really, no. In my defense, she’s been very busy. Always riding hither and yon with her teacher, all over the kingdom. Talking griffins out of terrorizing villages, making deals with ogres and wolves alike. I think she’s singlehandedly trying to improve relations between people and immortals. She’s been redesigning the palace menagerie, too. The poor girl needs to get some rest, _I_ think.”

“Myles is worried about them.”

“Of course he is, he’s not an idiot.” Thom took a swig of his ale and winced. “You know what, I think I’ll go back to my inn now. It looked like rain earlier, and I’d like to be warm in my bed before it starts in earnest. I’ll take my chances with the food there.”

“See you in the morning, then,” said George.

After Thom had swept out the door, his ridiculous black cloak billowing in his wake, a pretty young woman melted away from the crowd gathered around the bar and made her way over to George. “Sorry to keep you waiting, love,” he said, smiling up at her. “I hope none of those rough lads were bothering you.”

The woman, Lorrine Tailor, sat down across from him, glancing with a raised eyebrow at the bowl of soup Thom had abandoned. Then, with a sweet smile, she focused her attention on George. “Not at all. I was having a nice chat with the barkeep, and that big fellow who followed me here from Moneychangers’ Street.” She glanced back toward the two men, both George’s men, and smiled brightly at them. “I didn’t realize _he_ was one of your particular friends as well,” she added, jerking her head in the direction of the street door, to indicate Thom.

George raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you?” Though barely tested yet, Lorrine was already shaping up to be one of his sharper agents at the palace. She was maidservant to the queen’s newest lady-in-waiting, Uline of Hannalof, and she had a remarkable gift for drawing gossip to her as a spidren’s web drew innocent villagers. “What do you know about him?”

“Flashy dresser,” she replied. “Famous misanthrope. I’m told he has the power to levitate the castle off its foundations, and he’ll gladly do it if he isn’t left alone with his books more often than not.”

“Personal life?”

“Oh, that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The usual nonsense you hear about a man in his position — sleeping with the king, the queen, or both. Though I did hear a more credible rumor about him and Old Lord Fenrigh’s heir. Supposedly a footman caught them together.”

George nodded. That was mildly interesting, as most members of the Fenrigh clan were known for being staunch conservatives — but only mildly. “Keep an eye on him, would you?”

“Of course. Now, I’ve a report from my mistress, as well as some news of my own.”

She had one of the best memories of any agent he’d worked with thus far. Listening to her begin to recite Lady Uline’s report, George settled back in his chair, his mind busily sorting and filing details away for later consideration. Acquiring Lorrine and her mistress had been quite a coup; aside from Thom, Lady Uline was the only agent he had in Roger and Delia’s inner circle, and she’d already provided him with some valuable information.

Thom’s loyalty, of course, lay with Thom, and George respected him for that: a man had to look out for himself first. By contrast, Sir Myles’s loyalty lay with the realm, regardless of who happened to be sitting on the throne. George’s own motivations had never been so altruistic as that: he considered it his duty to serve the common folk of Tortall, just as he had as their Rogue, but the greater part of him was driven by revenge. One day, he would see King Roger brought low by spies, his reign in tatters and George’s knife at his throat for what he had done to Jon and Alanna.

After that, if George survived, then he could retire to the countryside with someone pretty at his side.

“Thank you, love,” he said, when Lorrine had finished telling him all that she knew. “Truly. My superior will be glad to hear this, too. And you know,” he added, as she got up from the table to leave, “it’s a noble thing you’re doing, serving the realm.”

**453 H.E.**

Kel limped back into her room, trying to hurry so she wouldn’t be late for lunch. Despite her best efforts and those of Stefan Groomsman, Peachblossom still had plenty of ornery days. That morning, an early spring snowfall had displeased him so much he’d stepped on her foot while she saddled him, bruising it even through her heavy riding boot. He could easily have broken it, so she chose to take his restraint as evidence he was warming up to her.

Seeing her limping out of the stable later, Neal had offered to heal the bruise. Kel was starting to regret her refusal, but refusing help was a reflex for her by now. “I could be walking without pain, but _no_ ,” she muttered, as she took off her padded practice jacket. “I had to be _tough_ , and let it roll away like water from a stone.” If only I really were stone, she thought. Then this wouldn’t hurt so much.

She hung her jacket over the back of her desk chair, and saw something that she hadn’t noticed before. There on top of her desk was a small package, wrapped in red silk and tied with a gold ribbon. Frowning, she drew her belt knife and used it to push the package closer to her, in case it contained some nasty surprise that Joren or one of his friends had left for her.

It looked ordinary enough, without any obvious trick to it. There was a label attached to the ribbon, with her name written on it in cramped, flowery handwriting she didn’t recognize. Shrugging, she picked up the package and untied the ribbon.

Under the red silk, she found an ornate glass jar, with the words “Bruise Balm” carved into the lid in gilt writing. Warily, she unscrewed the lid and sniffed the thick ointment inside. It had a faint perfumed smell. She touched it lightly, and when it didn’t sting or burn her finger, rubbed a little over a bruise on her knuckles from hand-to-hand combat training earlier that day.

The pain vanished instantly. She curled her fingers into a fist and stretched them out again, awed. She could see the bruise beginning to fade already. Who could have sent her such a fine gift? Neal, perhaps, or his father? Something about the container gave her the sense that the gift had been bought rather than made by whoever had given it to her, so perhaps not.

She needed to get changed for lunch, and quickly, but before she put the jar away, she sat down at her desk and pulled off her boot. Peachblossom had gifted her with a red bruise across half of her foot. Wincing at the sight of it, she gently rubbed some bruise balm over her foot, and sighed happily when the pain went away.

When she asked Neal about the bruise balm over lunch, he shook his head. “Not me, and not Father — he would have mentioned it. I could have a look at it after supper tonight, if you like. Did you use it already?”

She nodded, and showed him her hand. “The ache was gone right away. I used it on my foot, too.”

He studied her knuckles, frowning. “Looks good as new. I _thought_ your limp was gone when you ran into the mess hall just now.”

Just as he’d promised, he followed her to her room that night after supper. She pointed out the jar of bruise balm, still sitting on her desk, and then began to refill her sparrows’ food dishes for the morning. Neal unscrewed the lid, sniffed the ointment, and waved his hand over the jar. “Ouch!”

“Are you hurt?” she asked, alarmed.

“Not hurt — just surprised. There’s some _serious_ healing spelled into this. It’s worth its weight in gold. I only know of a couple places in Corus where you could even buy something like this.”

Kel sat down on her bed, harder than she’d intended. She couldn’t imagine anyone spending that kind of money on her, and she certainly didn’t know any healers who could have made it, except maybe Duke Baird. Anyone in her family would have included a proper note, and there hadn’t been one with the package. The only thing that seemed certain to her was that the bruise balm wasn’t a trick, and someone was looking out for her.

“You could ask Salma,” suggested Neal. “Whoever sent it, it probably got into your room through her.”

She hadn’t even thought of that. “I will. Thanks. Now, we’d better head over to your room if we’re going to get any work done tonight.”

His suggestion led to more questions than answers. When Kel talked to the head of the pages’ wing servants the next day, Salma was adamant that she hadn’t been given a package for her. And nobody should have been able to get into Kel’s rooms, she said, without either of them knowing about it.

“You always keep the bottom shutters locked when you leave?” asked Salma, and Kel nodded. “Then I’ll have a mage check the locks on the doors. There’s no _reason_ for them to have failed, but . . .”

Kel recalled her saying, back in September, that anyone who tried to pick the locks on her door would be sprayed with skunk-stink. Somehow, she doubted that she’d be able to figure out who had sent her the bruise balm that way. Whoever it was seemed too clever to be caught out by skunk-stink. “Would a mage be able to get in?” she asked.

Salma looked horrified by the very idea. “They’d have to be very powerful indeed. I’ll have the locks looked at right away, and see if we can improve them. Nobody should be getting into your room without your say-so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who noticed they could edit the tags! Ideally I would have added at least one of these earlier, but unfortunately it didn't even occur to me until like last week that the salacious rumors mentioned in this chapter definitely fall into the category of "implied past Thom/Roger" (clearly I am not great at tagging). It is past, mind you; they will not be making out onscreen at any point in this story (sincere apologies to anyone who wants them to).
> 
> A few lines of dialogue are appropriated from _First Test_.
> 
> When I open my nautical-themed gay bar, I'm calling it the Merman's Cave. (It is indeed the same place from _Bloodhound_ , which may be why George chose it, or he may have chosen it for the name alone. I skimmed the frame narrative of the Beka Cooper books again, and I'm honestly not sure whether George had access to Beka's diaries. Does anyone know if he actually read them, or if his mother just told him the stories?)


	11. The Aviary

**451 H.E.**

Daine was sitting on the steps leading up to the forecastle deck, having a conversation with a nearby pod of dolphins, when one of the other ambassadors from Tortall stumbled into her line of sight. He leaned hard against the railing, his face very pale, and at first she thought he was about to vomit over the side of the ship. Instead he leaned his head back, sweat glinting on his forehead, and breathed in shakily. To her eyes, he looked like Numair after an especially draining magical working.

“Excuse me, my lord,” she said quietly, concerned for him. “Are you all right?”

Thom of Trebond turned, looking startled. She smiled warily at him: he was known for being reclusive and sharp-tongued at court.

To her surprise, Lord Thom smiled back at her. Up close, he reminded her somewhat of a fox, with his narrow face and his shoulder-length red hair and trim red beard. “Just seasick, I expect,” he said. “I’ll be fine. My sister has always been prone to seasickness, and I suppose I am too.”

Daine frowned. She couldn’t recall ever having been introduced to anyone else from Fief Trebond, in the whirlwind of palace courtiers she had met since arriving in Corus, and if his sister looked anything like Lord Thom, with his bright hair and striking violet eyes, surely she would have noticed her. “I didn’t know you had a sister, my lord.”

He raised copper eyebrows. “You don’t listen to court gossip, then. Say, what are you doing topside, anyway? Conversing with sea turtles? There’s supposed to be a storm coming.”

The captain had said it was still miles away, and that they might outpace it anyway; they were expected to reach the River Zekoi within an hour or two. She wished Lord Thom had stayed below deck, rather than wander up here to make fun of her. “Dolphins, actually.”

He tilted his head to one side, looking genuinely fascinated. “Really? What are they saying?”

“They’re headed for the river mouth, just like we are. There’s a lot for them to eat there.”

“Huh,” he said, leaning his back against the railing and closing his eyes. “You know, there’s something to be said for fresh air. At any rate, this is preferable to making polite conversation in the galley with Duke Gareth of Naxen, Lord Martin of Meron, and Lord Alex of the Last Cabin on the Left, who always seems to be sitting on the bunk across from mine, sharpening his sword, whenever I walk in to change out of one sweat-soaked shirt into another. I ask you,” he went on, turning back to her, “why couldn’t the king have booked me in a room with someone else? Harailt of Aili, say, or that giant who taught you to commune with the beasts.”

“I don’t think you’d like rooming with Numair,” she said wisely. “He’s been known to snore.”

“At least he wouldn’t threaten to stab me for staying up past my bedtime to read.” He gazed out across the water, looking thoughtful. “When we were eight or nine, my sister and I took a small boat out on the duck pond. It was a bright summer’s day when we pushed off from the dock, but after a little while it began to rain. The wind picked up, tossing the boat to and fro over the middle of the pond. Alanna promptly turned green and spilled her breakfast into my lap. It was one of the worst days of my life.”

She smiled at the image, and then wondered precisely what he’d meant about court gossip. Perhaps Numair would know what gossip there was about the Trebond family.

Presently the wind changed, carrying with it the scent of rain, and the first few drops began to fall. “Blast,” he said. “I’ll have to go down into the galley after all. We’ll discuss crop rotation or the exchange rate with Tusaine or something equally dull, in case there are any spies among the crew of this rat-infested piece of driftwood, until I can feel my brain leaking out my ears.”

He glanced at her, looking thoughtful, and then offered her his hand. Faintly surprised, she took it, and let him pull her to her feet, silently calling goodbye to the dolphins. “I’d been wanting to talk with you, you know,” he said.

She frowned again, surprised by that. She and Numair had lived at court for a year now, and she couldn’t recall Lord Thom saying anything other than “Pleased to meet you” in all that time.

“Don’t look so modest,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You know you’re the only mage in the world of your kind. And you’ve charmed Roger, which counts for something. It’s so hard for him to trust other mages; he’s always waiting for the knife in his back.”

Daine shook her head slowly. From what Numair had told her about his days in Carthak, Ozorne’s court would be the same way. She was more than sick of backstabbing mages and nobles. “Well, I’m no expert on wild magic yet,” she replied. “You’ll want Numair for that. He’s been studying it for years.”

“From an academic perspective,” he pointed out. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression he couldn’t actually perform any of it.”

“Well, no, not really,” she admitted. They stood in the narrow hallway outside her cabin, with him blocking the doorway. She took a step to her left, and found herself up against the wall.

“Then it’s you I’d like to talk to,” he said, smiling down at her again. “There’s quite a lot I’ve been wanting to ask, if you don’t mind. Perhaps over dinner tonight?”

“Of course,” she said, suspicious. Why hadn’t he spoken to her before, if he was so interested?

“Well, I’ll let you go, then. I expect you’ll want to rest before we have to get dressed to meet the prince.” He stepped gallantly out of her way, slipping past her to go into his own cabin. Before the door shut, she heard him say to someone inside, “Surely that thing’s sharp enough. Haven’t you been scraping away at it since we left?”

“This is a short sword, Trebond,” came the response, cold and faintly amused. “Surely you didn’t think I only had one sword.”

Shaking her head again, Daine ducked into her cabin. She was looking forward to reaching the palace, even knowing that she’d have to tread carefully every second of every day, to keep the tenuous peace between Tortall and Carthak. At least in Carthak, she thought, she’d have more space to move around; she wouldn’t be tripping over bickering noblemen all the time.

With over an hour before she needed to get dressed to meet the emperor’s heir, Daine stretched out on her bunk, intending to take a brief nap. They had given her a cabin all to herself, as she was the only female ambassador from Corus, but it was hardly bigger than the two bunks it contained.

In fairness to Lord Thom, it may have been hard for him to find the time to speak to her at court, considering that she had spent a large part of the past year on the road. With Numair at her side, she had spent months at a time in the saddle, crisscrossing the Tortallan countryside in her role as the king’s personal ambassador to the immortals.

A knight had always accompanied them, of course, as had a squad of the King’s Own, in case they ran into trouble or tried to run for the border. For the first few months, that knight had always been Lord Alexander of Tirragen, whom the king had evidently appointed to guard them like a Coldfang. He appeared to enjoy the task as little as Daine enjoyed his presence. Once, right after she had changed into a hawk to scout for bandits ahead on the road, she had seen him dry-heaving into the underbrush far below, presumably disturbed by the sight of her transformation.

Eventually the king had loosened the leash on them, and one morning she had walked into the stable to find Sir Sacherell of Wellam standing there instead, watching his squire check over their horses’ tack. She grinned at him, surprised, and he had grinned back at her, saying, “Hello again, Daine. Ready for an adventure?”

At least King Roger had let her renovate his menagerie while she was at court. Not long after she’d arrived, he had taken her and Numair on a personal tour of it, looking puzzled by the gathering horror on her face. “In my uncle’s day this was the jewel of the palace,” he said eventually. “You don’t care for it?”

“Sire, they have no _room_. They’re trapped in those bare spaces, pacing all the time.”

He frowned at her. “They’re animals. Surely they don’t care.”

She took a deep breath, trying to recall how she had dealt with King Matrurin. “I think you’ll find they do, sire. Remember, I can hear their thoughts, and can feel as they do.”

He was silent for a few moments, looking thoughtful. “Show me,” he said at last, reaching out to her.

For an instant Daine was confused, and then she remembered something Numair had done once, where he had shown her magic through his eyes, as he saw it every day. “All right,” she said, hesitantly. She had muted her connection to the animals earlier, but now she opened it wide again, letting their emotions flood her senses as Roger’s hand lightly brushed her forehead. She shut her eyes, enduring it.

After a while she felt him pull his hand away, leaving cool air in its wake. She blinked her eyes open again. “Fascinating,” he murmured, gazing down at her with something like awe.

The tipping point had been Princess Jessamine and Prince Jonathan, when they had learned of the encounter in the menagerie. They had trailed her like ducklings since that first night at the party, where she had met the princess, and now they assailed their father with pleas to help the animals. After a few days of listening to them, Roger had met her in the stable one morning, dressed for riding and holding the reins of a beautiful chestnut stallion.

She gazed warily up at him. “I thought they would be sending a knight, sire.” They always did, when she informed the head hostler that she wanted to go for a ride in the Royal Forest. The king claimed it was for her safety.

He smiled pleasantly at her. “I felt like getting out of the palace for a while.”

She gulped, nodding. It wasn’t as though she could stop him. The king owned the Royal Forest and everything in it, after all, and now he seemed to own her and Numair as well.

“I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to allow you to make the necessary changes to the menagerie,” he told her, as they rode along the path leading away from the stables.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said quietly, resigned now to his company. She was determined not to enjoy it at all, especially not after something Jessamine had told her the previous night about having to leave very soon for the City of the Gods.

He frowned. “I worry that you’re not enjoying your time here, Daine. I’d hoped you would.”

She watched him for a moment, still wary. “How long are Numair and I meant to stay here, Your Majesty?”

“Why, for as long as you’d like,” he replied, smiling again at her. “Of course, you’ll naturally be staying for as long as it takes to renovate the menagerie, but after that, I hope that you and Lord Numair will both choose to make your homes here.”

The menagerie. She hesitated, thinking of all those animals in their bare, cramped enclosures, and then nodded reluctantly. After all, she had been the one to protest the conditions they were being kept in; she couldn’t abandon them now. “Yes, sire. Thank you.”

They had entered the forest, passing into the dappled shade under the trees. She recalled a similar ride she’d taken with Sir Myles a little over a month earlier, and then she thought of the map of Tortall pinned to the wall of his office. The country was enormous, a monstrous hulk of a realm. Even if she were capable of abandoning the animals in the menagerie, it would take ages for her to reach the border.

Roger gazed around, taking in the autumn sunlight filtering down through the trees, the brilliance of their blazing crowns and the gathering carpet of fallen leaves. “Is that a pheasant?”

She turned, following the direction of his gaze. “Yes.”

“Pretty,” he said quietly. Tensing, she waited for him to unstrap the longbow from his saddle, but he didn’t.

“It’s possible that you may have gotten the wrong idea about me, my dear, from my daughter,” he said, as they rode on.

Daine frowned. “Jessamine?”

“She’s not pleased about being sent away to the convent,” he explained, smiling ruefully at her. “To be honest with you, I don’t blame her.”

“I’m sorry, sire, but — why send her away, then?”

He raised an eyebrow, his smile growing more wry. “You saw how Jessamine reacted to the plight of the animals in the menagerie. Surely you noticed the way she calls down the lightning when she’s upset.”

Daine considered that, recalling the red fire that had shimmered and crackled over Jessamine’s braids, and the smell of lightning in the air.

“I ought to have guessed that one of my children would end up being a mage so powerful that no one at the palace can properly teach her,” he said, with something like regret. “I would have liked to keep her here until she was older, but . . . They grow so fast, don’t they?”

Daine frowned again, thinking of someone. “What about Thom of Trebond?”

The king looked amused by that. “Ah yes, her favorite tutor. She likes his abrasive sense of humor. He’s only one man, my dear, and he tells me he won’t play the nursemaid full time. Frankly, I wouldn’t ask him to. I need him for other things sometimes.”

She nodded slowly. “Jessamine thinks she’s being sent away to learn how to be a lady,” she confided in him, “for when she has to marry the Carthaki emperor’s heir.”

“She told you about that, did she?” said Roger, and then shrugged. “She’s not entirely wrong. She’ll have to learn those skills eventually. My wife would hate it if I let her run around carrying a sword her whole life, with lightning sparking over her hair, like some warrior queen of old.”

Daine watched him, trying to figure out how best to phrase her next question. “Forgive me for asking, Your Majesty, but aren’t you at war with Carthak?”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “In a way. Ozorne sends raiders in secret to batter our coastline, and immortals to ravage the interior. I send him more spies, and I discuss terms with him for the hand of my only daughter. This is business as usual, when you’re the ruler of a kingdom — or else they’re the opening moves in a war. At this point, things could go either way.”

Daine shuddered. Judging by the expression on his face when he spoke of her, the king clearly loved Jessamine — but what loving father would sell his child to his enemy as he was preparing to do? “But that’s crazy,” she said, before she could stop herself. “Begging your pardon, sire, but it is.”

He smiled again. “That’s politics.”

There was something bothering her about this conversation. “Forgive me, but — why are you telling _me_ this?”

He looked faintly surprised. “You’re the only mage of your kind in the entire world, Daine, at least as far as I’ve heard. What king wouldn’t want to have you by his side?”

They rode in silence for a few minutes, while she thought that over. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, after a while. “What was it like, living in a cave at Dunlath with the wolves?”

She blinked at him, startled.

“My father kept hounds when I was growing up,” he explained. “I was always fond of them. I learned to fear wolves as a child, of course, but since meeting you, I’ve started to wonder. Was I wrong? Are they more like large dogs than like monsters?”

“In some ways they’re very much like dogs, sire,” she replied, finding her voice again. “They live in family groups.”

As they rode on through the forest, she told him about the wolves of Fief Dunlath, about what their lives were like, and their names and personalities. He listened to her with interest, asking questions that showed he’d been paying attention to what she said. By the time they returned to the palace, she realized that in spite of herself, she had started to enjoy his company.

The menagerie had taken much longer to renovate than the one at the palace in Galla — there were repeated delays with the builders, a few instances of important tools going missing, and an illness that had swept the workmen shortly after Daine finished drawing up her plans — but it had been finished in the end. Along the way, the king had made other requests of her or Numair, immortals to parlay with or large-scale protection spells to renew. There was always something to hinder their return to Galla, another project to complete or simply the weather, as autumn gave way to a long winter followed by a wet spring.

Sleep was proving to be elusive right now, as Daine recalled everything that had kept her in Tortall for a year, wondering how much of it had been the king’s doing and how much had been mere coincidence. It wasn’t a subject she enjoyed thinking about. Just about every interaction she’d had with Roger had been pleasant, after that first ride through the forest; if they’d met under different circumstances, she might have liked him.

It was nearly time to start changing her clothes when suddenly her cabin blazed with silver light, and a familiar musty scent filled the air. Daine sat up, startled. When the light faded, the badger god was sitting on the empty bunk opposite hers.

She smiled, glad to see him again. It had been months since he’d last appeared in one of her dreams. “You look well. It’s been just over three months, hasn’t it?”

The badger did not respond in kind. _—Why are you here? It was bad enough the first time you left your home sett, but this is far worse. You’re a creature of pine and chestnut forests, and cold lakes. This hot, swampy land is no country for you! Why are you here?—_

Daine scowled at him. “I’ll tell you, if only you’ll stop growling at me.” When he fell silent, shifting his bulk unhappily from side to side, she explained to him that the Tortallans were drawing up peace treaties, and that she was there to heal the emperor’s birds. “Since there’s no proof that Ozorne or his mages were responsible for setting those immortals loose in Tortall and Galla, the king says he wants peace with them, not revenge. He says Tortall can’t take a war with Carthak right now, and _I_ don’t want to see them going to war either.”

The badger growled under his breath again. _—No one needs to talk peace or any other thing here. This is the worst possible place you can be now. You must turn around and go home. Go north, to your sett with the horses and your teachers.—_

“I can’t!” she protested. “Weren’t you listening? The emperor knows I’m coming to look at his birds. Think of the insult to him, if I turn around and leave now, when he’s expecting me. And it’s not the birds’ fault they live here, is it? Besides, I _can’t_ go back to Galla to live permanently, or else I’d insult the king of Tortall. Believe me, I wish I could. You _saw_ how his knights guarded me last year!”

Without any room in which to pace, the badger could only shift his weight, muttering to himself. Daine listened, intensely curious. She had never seen him looking so nervous before. “Talk who out of what?” she asked. “What’s going on here, anyway?”

 _—It’s the Great Gods,—_ he replied, _—the ones that two-leggers worship. They have lost patience with the emperor, and perhaps with this entire realm. Things could get very chancy here soon. Are you sure you cannot make your friends go home?—_

She shook her head. “We can’t go back to Corus now. And the Tortallans aren’t exactly my friends.”

_—Indeed, no. But one of your teachers is here with you, is he not? The tall one?—_

“That’s right,” she said. Though she felt as if he were walking into a trap, Numair had come with them to Carthak, just as the king had asked him to, after the emperor had pardoned him.

_—Good. Stay close to your friend. Do what you came here to do, for those birds, and then go home.—_

In some ways, meeting the emperor was even worse than meeting the king of Tortall had been. Where Roger had been friendly, seemingly wanting her to trust him, Ozorne had meant to dazzle them all. Free of him for now, Daine sat down hard on the nearest couch, relieved to be out of his direct line of sight, and Zek crawled into her lap. After a moment, Numair sat beside her, with Duke Gareth of Naxen on his other side. The other Tortallans gathered around, all of them dressed in their gaudy finery — closing ranks, she thought, biting her lip to hide a nervous smile.

“Are you all right?” Numair asked her softly. “I’d forgotten how intimidating he can be when he has all his imperialness on.”

On the dais, the emperor gleamed like a golden idol. She wondered whether meeting royalty ever got easier, or if the gods would just keep throwing bigger challenges at her as life went on. “I noticed. Are _you_ all right? Did he say anything to you?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “If I’m lucky, he’ll ignore me for the rest of our stay.”

“We should all be so lucky,” murmured Thom of Trebond, who was leaning against the wall behind him, wearing voluminous red robes over a cloth-of-gold tunic and dark blue hose. When Daine glanced at him, he smiled grimly. “He said hello to _me_. He insisted on meeting me when I was living here a few years back, and I have to say, I didn’t much care for him then. The gold eye paint suits him, though, I’ll give him that.”

“It went quite well,” said Duke Gareth, ignoring him. “You did us credit, Daine.”

She smiled at him, trying not to blush at the compliment. She didn’t know the duke very well, but from what she’d seen of him so far, he reminded her a bit of Sir Myles. It was nice to feel that there might be one person here she could trust, besides Numair and Lindhall Reed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

Gareth the Younger and Harailt of Aili, who had slipped away a few minutes earlier, returned now with servants bearing trays of cups. “Fruit juices,” explained Harailt, and Daine took a cup from one of the trays gratefully. She thought she tasted oranges in the juice, a costly treat, as well as some other fruit she couldn’t place.

Lindhall Reed had followed them over to the couch. “So far, so good. Numair, did he speak to you?”

“He didn’t even look at me. He spoke the most with Daine.”

“But what about his birds?” Daine asked, still confused by their absence from the brief conversation. “He didn’t mention them at all.”

“Rulers don’t act as other men do,” explained Duke Gareth kindly. “All requirements of protocol must be met before personal considerations may intrude. I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient until he sends for you.”

“But more of them might get sick,” she protested. Numair put a finger to his lips. She sighed, but fell silent.

“ _Arram_ ,” cried a voice, and everyone looked up. A woman rushed toward them, smiling broadly, her cream-colored mage’s robe fluttering behind her. Under her robe she wore a pink northern-style dress; the color complemented her blonde hair and blue eyes. Daine fought a surge of envy at the sight of her. Even after two years at one court or another, she still felt awkward in her own fine clothes; this woman wore hers like she’d been born in them.

Numair rose, looking stunned. Lord Thom took the opportunity to lean over the back of the couch where Numair’s head and shoulders had been, watching the proceedings with shrewd interest.

“Varice?”

“The same old Varice Kingsford,” she said, with a glint of tears in her eyes. She blinked rapidly. “I’m surprised you remember me.”

Numair took her hands gently, as though not quite believing she was really there. “How could I forget you, my dear?” he said, and she smiled, looking relieved. “You’re lovelier than I remember. Come, you must tell me everything I’ve missed.”

“Well, we’ve lost one already,” murmured Thom, as Varice led Numair through the crowd to a niche across the room, where they sat down together to talk. “Personally, I was expecting the first of us to be poisoned, like in that play where all the treacherous noblemen slowly die off one by one. Have you ever seen it?” he asked Daine brightly. “It’s an old staple a lot of Players seem to like.”

Duke Gareth was glaring at him. “Lord Thom, we talked about this. More than once, in fact.”

“Sorry,” he replied, not sounding the least bit sorry.

“Who was that?” Daine asked Lindhall, looking at the couch across the room where Numair and Varice sat together now, absorbed in conversation.

“An old school friend, like the emperor,” replied Lindhall quietly. “She was his lover before he fled the country. Apparently there were no hard feelings.”

Daine frowned. “Why didn’t she go with him?”

“He didn’t ask, and evidently she didn’t offer. But she never married, either, and she’s had a few serious proposals.”

Ozorne’s ministers had begun to drift over to them, to speak with the Tortallan ambassadors and lead them away to be introduced to Carthaki courtiers. Thom of Trebond ignored the mages who came for Harailt of Aili. After a while only he and Lindhall were left there in the corner with Daine.

As Lindhall beckoned to an enslaved woman holding a tray of fruit, Thom spoke again, his lips moving almost imperceptibly. “Opals.”

“What?” murmured Daine, puzzled. She accepted a bowl of fruit for Zek from Lindhall with a smile of thanks.

Thom was gazing at Emperor Ozorne on the dais. “He made a _collar_ of them. Now that’s making a statement. The thing about a collar is, you can’t swing the jewels on it around to catch the light.”

She frowned, remembering something Numair had taught her — that a lot of mages could catch and hold your attention with something bright and shiny in their hands. Jewels were good for it, especially magically powerful stones like the black opals the emperor wore, but it could be done with something as ordinary as a coin. The most powerful sorcerers could do it with their eyes alone, she remembered him saying. If a mage caught your attention like that, you’d be unable to look away, or refuse anything you were told to do, until the mage wanted to let you go. Daine suppressed a shiver at the idea of being trapped like that.

Thom smiled, seeing that she understood what he was talking about. “Have you ever noticed,” he murmured, “that Roger has a sapphire pendant he likes to wear? It complements his eyes, but that’s not why he wears it.”

She stared at him, and then tapped her earlobe to remind him that Duke Gareth had warned them all about listening spells throughout the palace.

“You’re right,” he said, “if this were indeed a play I’d probably be the next to die. But heed what I said about our king — I once tried to warn his darling Champion about that sapphire, and the man scoffed at me. I wish . . .”

His voice trailed off, as his frown deepened suddenly. Daine looked up. More mages from the Carthaki University had come for Thom and Lindhall. Thom sighed heavily, pushing off the back of the couch, and then stretched like a cat. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you and your little monkey friend later. At least, I hope I will,” he added, raising his eyebrows ominously at her.

Daine shook her head, praying that the man’s sharp tongue wasn’t about to land them all in the dungeon from which Numair had once escaped. She had wanted to talk more with Lindhall, but she supposed that would have to wait. It seemed like all she’d done since arriving in Carthak was wait for things: to see the emperor’s birds, to meet Numair’s old teacher, to see the university where Numair had grown up, and to find out what dreadful things the badger thought were about to happen here.

She wished that Cloud were here. It had made sense to leave her pony back in Corus, but it was hard to shake the feeling that she might never see her again. Numair had acted so grave and strange for a while, after King Roger had first asked them to accompany the ambassadors to Carthak, that Daine had wondered whether they’d even be returning to Tortall. She’d even asked Duke Gareth whether Cloud could come with them, but he had gently told her no. Her only consolation was that one of the Tortallan hostlers she’d befriended, Stefan, had wild magic with horses. Daine had asked him to look after Cloud and the other horses they had brought from Galla, and she knew they’d be safe in his care.

Zek offered her a grape, and she accepted it. “Thanks,” she said. “You know, what I _really_ want is to have a look at the emperor’s birds. They’re what I came here for, after all. I’m useless just sitting here on this couch. I wish I’d asked him if I could see them tonight.” It was easier to say that now that she wasn’t standing before the emperor, in all his gilded finery.

The air to her left shimmered, like the air above a road on a hot day. “Really?” said a soft, vaguely familiar voice, and she turned to face it, surprised.

Finally, the last bird flew away. Exhausted, Daine leaned against the railing, gazing out at the canopy before her and listening to the distant murmur of fountains. She could feel the birds all around her, resting now that their strange illness had been burned out of them.

She could use some rest of her own, after the long day she’d had. A good night’s sleep was the only thing she could think of that might help her figure out what exactly had caused the birds to get sick. With a sigh, she pushed away from the railing and made her way over to the staircase.

Ozorne had left, unable to bear the presence of his sick birds when there was nothing he could do to help them. Daine couldn’t blame him; if anything, he had risen in her esteem now that she’d seen that side of him.

She found Lindhall Reed waiting for her at the bottom of the spiral staircase, with Zek on his shoulder. To her surprise, they were not alone. Lord Alexander of Tirragen stood a few feet behind Lindhall, beside a fountain, gazing around him with something like wonder. She watched him for a moment, considering whether she might have been wrong about him. Perhaps he wasn’t as heartless as she’d thought. Anyone who treated his horses as well as he did couldn’t be all bad; perhaps, as with Ozorne, that kindness extended to birds.

He must have heard her coming down the stairs, because he glanced up at her, his dark eyes hardening.

“How did it go?” asked Lindhall.

“They’re healed,” she replied, fixing her eyes on him instead. “For now, at least. Oh dear,” she added, as the light showed her the full extent of what the birds had done to her gown.

“Perhaps I should continue to hold Zek.”

“That won’t be necessary, Reed,” said Lord Alexander, looking at the marmoset with faint disdain. “I’ve come to show Lady Veralidaine back to the guest quarters.”

Daine narrowed her eyes at him as Zek returned to her shoulder, recalling how she’d once overheard Lord Alexander describing her as “just some Gallan hedgewitch’s brat” to a sergeant in the King’s Own, only a few hours after she had persuaded a pair of griffins not to attack their party. “How kind of you,” she said, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

As she followed him away from the staircase, something occurred to her. “Master Reed,” she said, turning back for a moment, “if it’s possible, could the birds be left alone all day tomorrow? They can be fed so long as food’s left quietly. If there’s a way to keep it dark in the aviary for half the day —”

“Of course,” he said, looking intrigued. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Thank you.” She hoped she’d get the chance to talk more with him in the morning.

She followed Lord Alexander through the first pair of glass doors, and down the hall with the bird inlays. The King’s Champion kept his gaze straight ahead, hardly looking at their stone plumage or their flashing gemstone eyes.

“What was wrong with them?” he asked, as they passed through the second pair of glass doors and out into the gardens.

She frowned at him, suspicious, and then recalled the look of wonder on his face when she’d first seen him standing at the base of the stairs. Was he genuinely interested in her work, or had he merely been told to guard her and Numair while they were in Carthak, as he had during their first months in Tortall?

“I think it was something they ate, my lord,” she said finally. “You know, I could have found the guest quarters on my own.”

He paused beside a large fountain illuminated from within by stones that cast an eerie light over his face. “You would have preferred I abandoned you in the aviary?”

She took a deep breath, struggling to contain her temper. “I had Lindhall Reed. I was _fine_.”

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but she was fairly certain he raised an eyebrow. “I see. You were fine in the emperor’s aviary, alone but for your monkey and an instructor at the emperor’s university.”

Daine stared at him. “If you were told to guard me, fine, but don’t pretend to be _concerned_ about me.”

“Guard you?” he repeated, sounding amused now. His voice turned cold again quickly as he went on, “Oh, I see. You think Roger asked me to be your nursemaid. You don’t think I have enough to do while I’m here? I’m the king’s representative, Daine. I’m here _for_ the peace talks, and to get a better look at Ozorne’s army, and to duel whatever puffed-up peacocks the emperor wants to throw at me whenever he feels like playing at war to _entertain_ us all.”

“Oh,” said Daine quietly, feeling a little foolish, and then angry with him for making her feel like she’d been paranoid, when his king had been keeping her and Numair captive for a year. “I thought I was Lady Veralidaine.”

He snorted. “Sure, and I’m a Stormwing.”

“Hardly. As it happens, I’ve met Stormwings nicer than you,” she snapped, forgetting momentarily that there was a lake in Tortall named after this man’s family.

He moved suddenly, closing the distance between them, managing to loom over her somehow despite his small stature. “At least Stormwings are straightforward,” he hissed. “Not always shifting, always changing.”

She stared up into his hard dark eyes, almost relieved he had finally come out and said it. “Is _that_ your problem with me?”

His mouth twisted. “You’re — unnatural.”

“Well, you’re rude and unlikeable,” she replied, before turning and striding away from him, in what she was fairly certain was the general direction of the guest quarters. She didn’t hear him follow, but didn’t glance back to check.

It didn’t take her long to find her room, even in the dark. There was a man she didn’t recognize dozing in the common room outside the door, with the shaved head and rough tunic of the enslaved. At the sound of her footsteps, he started awake, and she smiled at him, embarrassed. She knew what she must look like, with her flushed cheeks, mussed hair, and gown strewn with bird droppings.

“Sorry to wake you,” she whispered. “I’m just getting my bathing things. I’ll be back in a while.”

“It’s no trouble, Nobility,” he replied, in faintly accented Common, his gaze on the floor.

“I wish you wouldn’t call us that.”

He didn’t reply. Ozorne would probably have the man’s head if he were caught speaking to her like a normal person, she thought, as she ducked into her room.

There was no sign of Lord Alexander when she returned, exhausted, from the women’s baths. The next time she saw him was over breakfast in the common room the next morning, where he sat scowling down at his meal on the other side of Duke Gareth, ignoring the duke’s praise of her.

“The concessions the emperor’s ministers have agreed to make have changed after Ozorne thanked us for bringing you here,” added the duke’s son, Gareth the Younger, and she watched Lord Alexander roll his eyes.

Daine bit into a buttered roll, frowning. The night before, Ozorne had described himself as a ruler whose ministers told him what to do, but now Sir Gareth was making it sound very much like they hopped to his tune instead.

“Which reminds me,” said Numair, as he offered a slice of melon to Zek, who had crawled onto his lap. “We’re scheduled to have a tour of the imperial menagerie after breakfast. Our guides should be arriving in, oh, about half an hour, I’d say.”

Daine winced. “A menagerie?” After seeing what the royal menageries in both Galla and Tortall had looked like before she’d had the chance to make changes, she dreaded seeing how Ozorne might keep his animals.

“Don’t worry,” said Numair, seeing the discomfort on her face. “He would never mistreat his animals.” If he placed a slight emphasis on the last word, Duke Gareth didn’t seem to catch it.

Daine smiled at him. “I’d better go change, then.” She hadn’t dressed for walking around outside, and she found she wasn’t particularly hungry anymore.

To her surprise, there was an old woman in her room, tidying her things. Daine stared at her for a moment, trying to work out where she had come from precisely. She didn’t recall seeing anyone pass them while they were at breakfast.

The woman grinned at her, revealing just a handful of teeth. “Don’t mind me, dearie. Go on, have a seat. I won’t be but another minute.”

Feeling awkward, Daine sat down in a chair near the door. “I only came in to change clothes.”

“You’re from up north, aren’t you?” she asked, as she plumped up the pillow on Daine’s bed. “Tortall?”

“I’m from Galla,” said Daine, as her upbringing got the better of her. “But most of us here are from Tortall. Here, grandmother, let me help.”

“So what do you make of us southerners?” asked the old woman, as they straightened the sheets on the bed. “Do you like Carthak?”

Daine frowned, suspicious. Was the woman a spy, and if so, whose spy was she? “It’s all right,” she replied finally. “It’s different from home, of course.”

“Empire’s in trouble, you know. Famine in the south, locusts, folk out of work, wells drying up.” She glanced up at Daine, studying her face with a faint smile. “It’s as if the gods have turned their faces from the emperor.”

There came a knock at the door. “Come in,” Daine called, unsettled by this conversation.

The door swung open. She had expected to see Numair standing there, and was taken aback to see Lord Alexander instead. “Varice and Kaddar are here.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking vaguely embarrassed. “I came to apologize, for my conduct last night.”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “You did?”

He gazed back at her evenly, his expression difficult to read now. “I lost my temper, and for that I’m truly sorry. Daine — we’re trying to prevent a war,” he said, lowering his already soft voice. “We’re here to face down a common enemy. We can’t afford to quarrel. Truce?”

She was silent for a moment, considering what he’d said, and then she nodded reluctantly. “All right. Truce.”

He smiled slightly, his hand on the doorknob again. “I’ll see you outside in a bit.”

Daine turned back to the old woman, who had been watching Lord Alexander thoughtfully. “Interesting man,” she said, after the door had shut behind him. “Not bad-looking either, though he’s too short for my taste.”

Daine stared at her, horrified.

“Now, what were we talking of? Ah yes — it’s as if the gods have turned their faces from the emperor.”

It wasn’t until her fifth day in Carthak that Daine was able to visit the university, after a whirlwind of banquets and palace tours. Lindhall’s office was a wonder, and she thought she could have spent hours there, among friends she could trust and content in the knowledge that the emperor’s birds were on the mend. She was in the midst of talking with a group of girdled lizards from Zallara when Prince Kaddar cleared his throat. “I hate to rush you,” he said, “but we have a visitor.”

“Oh dear,” said Lindhall, “did I lose track of time?”

Daine turned around, frowning, and saw Numair standing beside the tank that housed the Copper Isles iguanas. She gaped at him, shocked. “But I saw you before we left, in your room.”

He smiled sheepishly. “It was a simulacrum, embodied with sufficient amounts of my Gift to deceive anyone. I’m expressly forbidden to leave the palace.”

So of course he had left the palace. How sensible of him. “And if you’re caught? The emperor would love to catch you breaking the rules!”

“Daine, we had to talk,” said Kaddar. She turned to him, surprised, and saw that he and Lindhall were watching her. “There’s no other way we can do it without being spied on.”

“You knew he’d be here this morning,” she snapped. “That’s why you brought me.”

“I also wanted you to see _my_ friends,” said Lindhall, the kindness in his voice dispelling her anger. She _had_ enjoyed meeting all the lizards, and Master Sunstone the turtle.

“All right,” she said, smiling reluctantly at him, and then turned back to Numair. “You _could_ have trusted me.”

“I do trust you, magelet,” he said. “I simply didn’t wish to discuss it under Ozorne’s roof, or where our Tortallan friends might overhear. You aren’t particularly adept at concealing your state of mind. Your apprehension would have been obvious if I’d left with you and His Highness, whether or not I was invisible.”

She nodded slowly. What he said made sense, but she still didn’t like it. “How _did_ you get here?”

“Hawk shape. Now, we have little time and much to discuss. First, before I forget, there’s something I need to show you.”

He led her to the door of the room where Lindhall had put Master Sunstone. As he turned the doorknob, he said, “This is my most lifelike simulacrum thus far. I’ve been working on it for some time — since the king first approached me about us coming to Carthak, in fact. I had it shipped here to Lindhall through one of Sir Myles’s agents.”

“So the Tortallans don’t know about it?” she said, as he removed the dark cloth from the shape on the bier. “Oh! That’s fair creepy.”

Numair studied the face of his double, which by all appearances lay asleep on the bier. “Yes, it is, now that you mention it. I suppose I’ve grown somewhat used to it. No, they don’t know.”

He frowned. “You know, Daine, when we returned from the banquet last night, I had the sense that someone had been in my room.”

She blinked at him, thinking of the old woman she’d found cleaning hers. “One of the slaves?”

“It’s possible,” he said, but he sounded troubled. “It didn’t look as though they’d tidied anything up, though — just moved a few things around.”

That chilled her. “As though they were looking for something?”

“Perhaps. But I couldn’t find anything missing, and what seemed out of place was small — a few books and my hairbrush.” He frowned, his gaze on his simulacrum again. “I’ve told you about essence magic, haven’t I? How we carry our essence in every part of us, and leave some trace of it on whatever we touch?”

She nodded. That sounded familiar.

“What concerns me,” he went on, “is that I couldn’t find a clear trace of anyone else on the items I thought had been moved. A servant would have left some of their essence behind.”

“Could a mage hide their essence?”

He hummed thoughtfully. “Perhaps a mage, perhaps just a well-trained spy. There are spells that dim one’s essence, and whoever it was could have worn some of my clothes over theirs, to muffle my sense of them. Whoever it was, they were very clever.” He sighed, shaking his head. “It was almost enough to make me think I’d imagined the whole thing.”

They regarded the simulacrum on the bier for a while in silence. “What are you going to use it for?” Daine asked eventually. It wasn’t the right question, she thought, after the words were out of her mouth. What she’d really meant to ask was what exactly he thought was going to happen here, but she had already asked him that before they’d left Tortall. He hadn’t been able to give her a clear answer.

“I’m not entirely sure yet, but a few possibilities have occurred to me.”

A memory struck her then — Lord Rikash on the balcony a few nights before, talking and dicing with the old woman who had cleaned Daine’s room, and how the woman had looked right at her with the dice still rolling around in the cup, and said, “I always like to keep more than one die in my cup.” Then she had winked at Daine, and Lord Rikash had lost the game. “Maybe next time, dearie,” the old woman had said to him, before leaping off the balcony. Perhaps the simulacrum in Lindhall’s office was just another die in Numair’s cup.

“Well, use it for something good,” said Daine, feeling troubled by her memories of the old woman. “What else did you come here to talk to us about?”

He turned back to the doorway, looking inquiringly at Lindhall and Kaddar. “Plans,” he said, after the prince nodded to him. “Should things go south while we’re here, Daine, so to speak, our friends are well equipped to help us get to safety.”

“We’ve secretly been working to change things in Carthak for a while now,” explained Kaddar. “A number of academics at the university are involved, as well as nobles and merchants.”

Daine sighed. She thought she liked the sound of that, but she had to admit she was getting very tired of secrets. “Tell me about your plans, then.”

They talked for a while. For the most part, she listened while they talked, explaining the organizing that Lindhall and Kaddar and their fellow conspirators had been doing for years to increase the rights of enslaved people in Carthak, as well as the rights of the middle and lower classes. The scope of their work impressed her. If nothing else, she thought, they had a large network of friends who might be able to hide Numair if he had to flee Carthak again in a hurry, leaving the simulacrum behind as a decoy.

“Well,” said Kaddar, as they left Lindhall’s office later, “is there anything else you’d like to see in the city before we head back?”

“Actually, I’d like to look at some of your chapels and temples,” she said, remembering that the old woman had suggested it, just before Daine had left for the menagerie tour on their second day in Carthak. There was something odd going on here, and she wanted to get a clearer sense of what it was.

Seeing the temples had left Daine with a lot to mull over during the disastrous river cruise that evening, and again during the banquet the following night. At the banquet, she was seated next to the prince while they dined, with Harailt of Aili on her other side. The Tortallan mage, Numair had told her, had recently been appointed Lord High Chancellor of the Council of Mages. As they ate, gazing out at the ornamental lake beyond the terrace, Harailt filled them in on the progress of the peace talks.

That morning the emperor hadn’t even made an appearance, and Duke Etiakret had walked out after Duke Gareth had told him that the king of Tortall would not agree to import silk, dyes, and glass only from Carthak. When Etiakret had returned later, it had only been to inform the Tortallans that Carthak would not be surrendering any of its citizens to northern justice, regardless of whether or not they were pirates caught attacking Tortallan ships and coastal settlements.

“It doesn’t look good, does it?” Daine murmured to Kaddar, when Harailt turned away to speak with the woman seated on his other side, a mage from the Carthaki University.

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you see _any_ happy faces around here?”

She shook her head. “Nary a one.”

It reminded her of an encounter they’d had earlier that day. After strolling through the gardens that morning and then visiting the archery yard, she and Kaddar had wandered into the Hall of Bones again. He had been in a moody silence after she’d soundly beaten his friends at archery, but she had been able to ignore that when surrounded by the preserved skeletons of the massive, ancient reptiles that graced the Hall of Bones; and after a while, the place seemed to have a soothing effect on him as well.

It was a place meant for solemn, solitary contemplation, but to her surprise, they had not been the only visitors to it that afternoon. Rounding the side of a titanic snake-neck lizard, they had passed Thom of Trebond and Alexander of Tirragen, of all people, strolling together through the hall. “We should return to the talks,” she overheard the latter saying, after he’d acknowledged her and Kaddar with an almost friendly nod.

“Not yet,” said Lord Thom as they passed her. “I _saw_ you at lunch. You looked like you were ready to launch yourself over the table and throttle Etiakret.”

“We’ll be missed.”

“Just humor me, please. Walk with me a while longer in the quiet. Contemplate these long-dead creatures. What do you suppose _that_ one did to displease the gods? It has the shortest arms I’ve ever seen. How do you think it scratched its nose?”

A soft chuckle, and then, just before they walked out of earshot, Daine heard Lord Alexander say quietly, “These smaller ones over here are said to be related to birds.”

“Really?” said Lord Thom, his voice carrying a little further than his companion’s. “Who told you that?”

With the way the talks had evidently been going, Daine was a little surprised to see Duke Etiakret seated at the other end of the terrace in one piece, looking quite serene and unmarred by violence. She doubted that most of the other Tortallan ambassadors felt much differently from Alexander of Tirragen.

No one was paying much attention to her and Kaddar now, and as night fell the shadows came on fast. Curious about what the other diners were discussing, Daine reshaped her ears to make them more like a bat’s, and began to listen to the scraps of talk that came from the further reaches of the party as she twitched them about.

“— ever get tired of meeting army generals and whatnot?”

“I’m a knight, Trebond,” replied the King’s Champion, sounding amused. “One of these days you’re going to have to explain to me what it is you think I do all day.”

“After another glass of wine or three. And after _you_ explain to me what you think it is _I_ do all day.” It was the oddest thing, but something in Lord Thom’s voice, some playful lightness, reminded her of overhearing Varice talking with Numair. A twitch of her ears brought Varice’s voice to them instead, and Daine scowled. Since they’d arrived, Numair had spent most of his free time with her, leaving Daine to study alone in the palace libraries. She was glad to have Kaddar’s company to make up for her teacher’s absence, even when she didn’t like his ideas about what women could and couldn’t do with a longbow.

“— am _not_ going to let those things ruin his party, Numair. His Imperial Majesty was simply in a mood. Etiakret will come to your people tomorrow, all smiles and conciliation, just you watch. Try the dormice, won’t you? They’re rolled in honey and poppy seeds —”

Daine winced, and directed her ears elsewhere. Dormice were not at all to her taste.

“— the result of a misunderstanding on my part, my dear Lord Martin. The emperor has taken me sternly to task, and I assure you, in the morning the progress of the talks will be far different —”

She was tired of hearing about the talks. She moved her ears again, briefly catching Varice’s description of an overly rich-sounding stuffed pheasant, and then found herself listening to Lord Thom again.

“— objecting from a moral standpoint, Tirragen? That doesn’t sound like you.” His voice was much softer than before, and slightly husky, perhaps from the wine. Wanting to keep an eye on his dining companion, Daine sharpened her vision as well, making it more like an owl’s, and turned to look at them. They were seated beside each other at a nearby table, their chairs turned slightly toward one another.

“No, that’s not it,” said Lord Alexander, his eyes fixed on Lord Thom’s face. “It’s that there’s no real skill involved.” One corner of his mouth lifted slightly, in a faint smile. There was a soft, almost sad look in his eyes that Daine had never seen there before. Getting the sense that there was something here she probably shouldn’t be witnessing, she dimmed her sight again.

A soft chuckle. “Ah, now _that_ sounds like you.”

Beside her, Harailt said something to Kaddar, too loud for her bat ears to make out. Wincing at the painful echoes, she returned her ears to their usual shape, and returned her attention to her companions and the meal in front of her.

As the sky grew darker, she and Kaddar talked about his mother and sisters, and about the life Daine had led back in Galla before the rebellion at Fief Dunlath. She wanted to discuss the neglected, poorly kept temples and shrines he’d shown her in the city the day before, but she knew he’d be even more worried about listening spells here in the palace than he had been in the city. And she very much wanted to tell him about the strange experience she’d had at the last temple, when she thought she had recognized the old woman she’d met in her room in the image of the goddess worshiped there. A coughing fit had prevented her from mentioning it to Kaddar then; she didn’t dare try again now, with listening spells and spies all around.

As dinner wore down toward an end, her conversation with Kaddar turned back to the subject of what he was studying at the university. Along with the topic of animals, that was perhaps the safest thing they’d found to talk about, and one of the first things they’d bonded over.

Light-globes were glowing on the terraces now, and musicians had begun tuning their instruments. In the doorway leading to the kitchens, a pair of enslaved men appeared suddenly, pushing a large metal cart that bore an enormous, elaborate cake shaped like the imperial palace. For the first time, Daine realized that the palace was built to resemble a rising sun.

“The cooks made each piece and all the spun sugar ornaments and so on,” said Kaddar, “but Varice is the one who designed the cake and put it together.”

“Is that what she does here?” asked Daine. She had meant to ask first Lindhall, and then Numair, more about Varice since they’d arrived in Carthak, but had never gotten the chance.

Kaddar nodded. “She specializes in cooking magic. She’s Ozorne’s official hostess, and has quite a Gift with entertaining.”

Daine frowned, recalling something Lindhall had said. “They were all friends growing up, weren’t they? Her and Numair and the emperor.”

“They were, when they were students at the university together. Things changed when they were older.”

The guests were all applauding, and Daine joined in reluctantly. It seemed wasteful, all this expensive frivolity amidst talk of the gods turning their faces from the country. When she thought about it, though, she knew that wasn’t the real reason she felt so sour toward Varice. The older woman had stolen away her teacher’s time and attention, at a moment when Daine only wanted to be home in Galla, where everything would be safe again. She had no real allies here besides Numair, no one she trusted so completely, and it hurt to think he was ignoring her. He probably wasn’t doing it deliberately, she reminded herself. With the danger they were currently in, that would have been very stupid of him, and he wasn’t a stupid man. He had probably just missed Varice, during all their years apart.

As the pastry knife bit into the frosting, the front of the cake bulged, as if something were trying to get out. Suddenly Varice shrieked. An enslaved man standing nearby dropped the pitcher he was holding, as rats began to pour out of a hole in the cake.

They streamed over the terrace like water pouring out from a breached dam. When they came for Varice, trying to climb her skirts, the mages hesitated, unable to throw fire without hitting her. The King’s Champion was already on his feet, groping for a sword he wasn’t allowed to wear to the banquets. Distantly Daine heard Duke Gareth exclaim something about the gods, his voice choked with horror.

“Stop! _Stop_!” she cried, as she stood up and bolted toward the rats.

She let her power flood out to envelop them, and discovered that they were passing through a gate from their homes along the river into the center of the cake. In their thoughts, she saw a clear image of the old woman she had met in her room, pointing them toward the gate with her gnarled walking stick. Her gown and hair were longer than they had been when Daine had first met her, even longer than when she’d seen the woman dicing with Rikash later, and now one of her eyes was a mass of scar tissue. Old slave woman my _behind_ , she thought with narrowed eyes, remembering the statue of the Graveyard Hag in the temple.

“Imperial Majesty!” someone cried, breaking Daine’s concentration. Rats broke free, launching themselves at her and the other guests. She slammed them with her power, killing two of the rats who had leapt at her face.

“Majesty, even you can’t continue to ignore the portents!”

Ozorne pointed at the Carthaki nobleman who had called out to him. Green fire lanced from his hand, devouring the man. Daine took a deep breath and recovered her grip on the rats, forcing them away from the tables and the guests who had scrambled to their feet. They fought her hard.

Looking around for something to make her angry, to give her focus, Daine turned her attention back to the cake, which lay in ruins on the flagstones. She thought of the hours it must have taken Varice and the cooks to create something so beautiful, laboring in a hot kitchen over every flourish of icing. Gritting her teeth, Daine bore down and finally managed to force all of the rats back the way they’d come. When the last rat was gone, the remnants of the cake collapsed.

Still breathing hard, Daine looked around. Varice was bracing herself against a table, her head bowed. The enslaved man who had dropped his pitcher reached a hand out toward her shoulder, as though to offer her support, but stopped short of touching her. She glanced up at him, looking as though she were about to cry, and said something quietly to him.

Out of nowhere, Numair appeared, looking at Daine with concern. “Are you all right?” he asked her. “One of them bit you.”

Daine showed him the rip in her sleeve where the rat had latched on, trying to smile. “Didn’t even nick the skin. It was only _rats_. Numair, is she all right?”

He squeezed her shoulder, smiling. “I’ll go see. I’m so glad you’re not hurt.”

Daine watched him go to Varice, picking his way around the scattered wreckage of cake on the stone flags. As he neared her side, he removed his little vial of wakeflower from one of his pockets, just in case. Daine shook her head slowly. She didn’t envy Varice right now.

“Are you all right?” Kaddar asked her.

She turned to him, smiling less shakily now. “I’m fine, truly. What a memorable party this is.”

“It certainly is,” he replied, as they gazed around the terrace. Duke Gareth and Duke Etiakret were arguing in whispers, and slaves huddled in the shadows, watching the places where the rats had been with wide, uneasy eyes.

Thom of Trebond had tripped and fallen at some point, in his haste to get away from the rats. As Daine watched, the King’s Champion reached a hand down and hauled him to his feet. “All right?” Daine heard Lord Alexander say, in the hush that had followed the rats’ departure.

Lord Thom was shuddering all over. “Oh gods, oh gods.”

“There aren’t any rats on you. They’ve all gone.”

“Tirragen, this is the wrong time for your unshakeable sense of calm. Let me have my hysterics in peace.” He yanked a hand through his artfully curled and perfumed red hair, undoing what looked like hours of work. “I must say that was even more viscerally upsetting than statues wandering around yelling in Old Thak.”

“Shut up,” said Lord Alexander, tapping his earlobe.

Lord Thom rounded on him, his eyes bright. “We just watched rats explode out of a _cake_! I’m tired of pretending I’m having a normal week!”

Numair returned then, with Varice at his side. She was paler than usual, but otherwise composed. “We need to get out of here before the sky starts raining blood or something equally pleasant,” he said. “Where’s Ozorne?”

The emperor had vanished. In his absence, more guests had begun talking audibly of the omens they’d seen, without seeming to care anymore whether the emperor overheard them or not. In a way, that made Daine feel uneasier than the rats had.

“I’d better go check on him,” said Varice, looking worried. “No doubt he’s in one of his moods.”

Numair frowned. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

She turned to him, raising her eyebrows. “Do you happen to have a better one right now?”

“Excuse us, please,” he said to Daine and Kaddar, and they strode away, arguing all the while.

Daine watched them go, shaking her head slightly. “It’s not as if we can _do_ anything about all this,” she complained to Kaddar, as Zek began to doze off in her arms. She stroked the marmoset’s head gently. At least one of them could relax in this place.

Kaddar attempted a smile. “Would you like to go for a walk? We could visit the menagerie again, if you like, or the Hall of Bones.”

In her dream, Daine rode a flat-bottomed barge down a green river. A frilly yellow awning kept the sun off her face, and a rat offered her a choice of tarts from a white straw tray. Two other rats fanned her with huge black feathers. She looked around, and saw vultures perched on the rail.

“Nice to have another chance to talk to you,” she said dryly.

Beside her, the Graveyard Hag reclined on striped cushions, nibbling treats from a tray held by another rat. Daine looked closely at the treats, recognizing bits of worms, beetles, and fungi, with tufts of moss for decoration. She grimaced.

“Don’t worry, child,” said the Graveyard Hag, chewing noisily. “The way things are shaping up, I probably won’t even need you. I wanted to get a good look at you, though. You’d be the perfect vessel if I ever needed one.”

“What do you mean, vessel? And why me? I’m supposed to be behaving myself here.”

The Graveyard Hag waved a tart made largely out of glossy green beetles. “A vessel for a god’s power, my dear. It can’t be just anyone.”

“Do you mean . . . because my da is a god, like the Banjiku said?”

“Oh no, or else we’d have even fewer vessels than we do now. You see, most mortal women die giving birth to a god’s child. No, for a vessel what we need is someone with imagination, a strong will, and determination. And anger — plenty of anger.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Nonsense, my dear. Think of your mother’s death. Think of how you were treated in that awful village you came from.”

Daine gazed down at her lap, as memories she hadn’t relived in well over a year returned to her vividly. There it was again, the anger that had thrummed in her bones for months after her family had been killed. Living in Cría with Sir Myles had muted it, and living in Tortall had given her other, more immediate concerns to occupy her mind — but it was always there, deep down. It had grown to be such a part of her that she didn’t even notice it anymore.

“Well, there you are,” said the goddess. “But the truth is, we don’t always need a vessel. Mortals are funny creatures. Sometimes you meet one who wants the same thing you do, and you just have to give them a bit of a nudge. Just give them a little touch of your hand, or open a door for them. To be entirely candid, though, I’d thought of giving you some of my power.”

Daine looked up again, narrowing her eyes at her. She didn’t like the sound of any of that, and she also objected to the Graveyard Hag’s phrasing — she doubted the goddess was ever entirely candid with anyone. “What kind of power?”

The Graveyard Hag sighed wistfully. “I wanted to see the skeletons dancing in the streets, just like old times. But who knows? Perhaps there will be time for that later. We’ll have to see how things turn out.”

“Why don’t you already know how things are going to turn out? You’re a god, after all.”

She cackled, shaking her head. “You _are_ a funny thing. It’s true that we can see ahead a bit — but not too far, and not when the events concerned are going to create so much change. Quite a few of you have some very important choices to make here over the next several hours, and you’re going to have to make them on your own. We poor gods only get to come in and straighten up _after_ you choose.”

Daine raised her eyebrows. The goddess was laying the self-pity on a little thick here. “I’d no idea what a struggle it was for you. I take it I’m not going to be allowed to talk about this conversation with anyone?”

“Certainly not. I don’t want you giving away the game. Back to bed with you now, I’m tired of your sauce.” She flapped her hand, and in an instant the barge was gone, and Daine was sitting up in bed, with Zek grumbling sleepily at her.

“Just a dream,” she whispered to him, but she didn’t think she’d be able to get back to sleep now. It was nearly dawn, and besides, she wanted to check on the progress the emperor’s birds were making. Closing her eyes, she reached out to them with her magic.

When she found them, she realized that something was very wrong. They were starting to fall ill again, after she’d already told the emperor they were healed. “Oh no,” she murmured, as she slid out of bed, taking care not to disturb Zek. “No, no, no.”

She was going to have to tell the emperor to have the paint changed, or at least cover it with something that wouldn’t crack or break, she thought, as she headed back down the stairs. These birds would leave the green enamel alone, she’d made sure of that, but soon new generations would hatch.

The emperor would be asleep this early in the day. Even so, Daine took her time walking the paths of the aviary, just in case he woke early to visit his birds. She wanted to tell him about the lead paint sooner rather than later. She dimly recalled hearing soft footsteps far below her about an hour ago, and perhaps a low voice, but she had filed the sounds away as probably servants, and gone back to her work on the upper level.

As she came within sight of a fountain, half obscured by the heavy leaves of a huge, sprawling plant, she realized she had been wrong. The emperor sat against the base of the fountain, his face turned away from her. She took a step back when she saw him there, startled.

“I’m sorry, Your Imperial Majesty,” she said, uncertain. “I didn’t expect to see you there. I came to check on the birds, and . . .”

He was silent and unmoving. Perhaps he had fallen asleep, she thought. She went over to see, making sure to step quietly so as not to disturb him.

The emperor was not asleep. His eyes were wide and glassy, his skin very pale and tinged with gray. Daine swallowed, her mouth tasting sick and sour. Then she turned away, hurrying quietly back down the path and out of the aviary. Duke Gareth had advised her not to get into any trouble while she was in Carthak, and being the one to find the emperor’s corpse was far more trouble than she needed.

There was no one in the common room when she got back to the suite she shared with the Tortallan ambassadors. She breathed a sigh of relief at that. Some of them rose quite early, and she was glad not to have collided with Duke Gareth or Alexander of Tirragen on her way back from the aviary. It was far better if nobody found out she’d left her bedroom that morning.

Was this what the Graveyard Hag had meant, when she’d talked of mortals having to make important choices? It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Ozorne had died suddenly in the middle of peace talks. They’re going to blame us, she thought, and then she wondered if they’d be wrong.

She felt cold all over, yet strangely clear-headed, as she made her way through the suite to Numair’s bedroom door and knocked softly. Silence. No one seemed to be awake yet except her. But when she knocked again, Numair opened the door. “Magelet?” he said, looking bleary-eyed and puzzled.

“Ozorne’s dead,” she whispered, and then remembered that he had once been Numair’s closest friend. “I’m so sorry.”

He stared at her, eyes wide. “What?”

Then he seemed to recover from his shock and gazed intently past her, down the corridor. She turned, but there was no one there. Numair stepped back, letting her into his room. After quietly shutting the door behind them, he warded the room with black fire. “Dead? You’re sure?”

She nodded. “I found him in the aviary, propped up against a fountain. He looked as though he’d been dead for at least an hour. There wasn’t a mark on him, so I think it was poison.”

Soft footsteps below her, a low voice. Suddenly she recalled Lord Alexander standing in the aviary on their first night in Carthak, gazing around him with what she’d thought was wonder, and the way he had asked her what was wrong with the birds. She recalled her reply, that she thought it was something they had eaten, and cursed under her breath.

Numair nodded slowly, as though coming to a decision. “We should leave. Is there anything you want to take out of the palace? Besides Zek, of course. Naturally he’ll be coming with us.”

Daine stared at him, bewildered. “What, right now?”

He sighed, looking rather sad. “I’m afraid so. As soon as Ozorne’s body is discovered by someone else, someone who will sound the alarm, I’m the most likely suspect.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Of course.” She ran through her belongings in her mind, trying to remember what she’d brought to Carthak. Her longbow was back in Corus with Cloud. It wasn’t _things_ that were important anyway. How was she going to get back to Cloud now?

“Wait,” she said, something else occurring to her. “What about Kaddar? Won’t they suspect him?”

Numair hesitated. “Perhaps. But I get the sense that I’m more of a liability to the king than Kaddar is, and Lindhall agrees — he knew Roger before he was crowned, when he was still living in Carthak. Apparently Roger used to have a nasty habit of sabotaging other mages’ careers, especially mages likely to be as powerful as he was.”

She felt cold again. “So the king set us up.”

“I think, given how events have unfolded, that it’s the most likely possibility. I have a feeling that when they find Ozorne’s body, they’re also going to find something that points very clearly to me. I’d like us to be safely out of the palace by the time that happens, which means now.”

She nodded. “Are you going to take hawk form again? Where are we going? To Lindhall’s office?” She was going to have to turn into something that would escape notice, she thought. A cat, maybe.

He shook his head. “The university is the first place they’ll look. No, I know of a place in the city. Lindhall agreed to hide us there, if it came to this.” He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, smiling sadly. “I’m so sorry about all this, Daine.”

“I know,” she said, putting her hand on his, to show that she didn’t blame him for anything. He was going to let them catch his simulacrum, she realized, and probably execute it. That was clever of him.

She pulled away, turning toward the door. “I’m going to let Zek know what’s going on.”

Then she remembered something, and turned back to him. “Oh — we’re going to have to tell Lindhall, so he can pass the message on to Kaddar — it’s lead paint, Numair. That’s what’s been making the birds sick.”

He had just raised his fist to knock again when the wards vanished and the door flew open. Roger leaned against the doorframe, looking disheveled and slightly out of breath. There were streaks of soot on his white shirt. “Sorry about that. Please, come in.”

Alex frowned. “Is this a bad time, my lord?”

The king stepped back, shaking his head, and beckoned him into the room. “No, no. I summoned you, didn’t I? Shut the door behind you.”

There was a jug of wine sitting on Roger’s desk, with a cup beside it. Roger crossed to the cabinet against the far wall, retrieved a second cup, and began to pour. “Let us drink to your health, my little kingkiller.”

Alex watched him, warily. “You’ve been throwing fireballs around again, haven’t you?”

“I confess,” said Roger, “to having felt some — frustration, let’s say — when I heard that the girl escaped, but that’s not your fault. I never asked you to be her nursemaid. You already had more than enough to do in Carthak.”

He put his hand on Alex’s shoulder, flashing him a sudden, brilliant smile. “Thank you. Cheers,” he added, and handed him the second cup of wine. “So, tell me all about it. How did you like Carthak?”

“I didn’t,” said Alex, as they sat down together by the fireplace. “It was too hot. Didn’t care for the food, either.”

“No?” said Roger, looking surprised. “I always liked the food.”

He sat sprawled in his armchair, looking like a pirate captain in his scarlet breeches, tall black boots, and that soot-streaked shirt. There was even a ruby in his ear. Alex smiled when it caught the firelight, recalling how Duke Etiakret had thrown a fit over Duke Gareth’s polite request to give at least _one_ Carthaki pirate a fair trial. It had been one of the only entertaining things that had happened over the course of those farcical peace talks.

“So, did you watch Ozorne die?” asked Roger. There was a slightly feverish undertone to his skin that made Alex wonder how many cups of wine he’d already had.

“Of course.” He had stood over him, meeting Ozorne’s eyes as he waited for his labored breathing to stop, and it hadn’t exactly felt sporting. The look in the emperor’s eyes — shock, betrayal, rage — had stayed with him afterward, resurfacing when he closed his eyes at night.

Roger took a sip from his cup, looking thoughtful. “You know, Thom showed me the first knife he enchanted, shortly before you both left for Carthak. Evidently the spell was designed to trigger a massive apoplexy, without leaving any trace of its maker behind. If it worked as it was meant to, any mage who examined the body afterward would find no indication of anything besides a natural death.”

“That’s clever,” said Alex, thinking of the plain belt knife that Thom had given him the night before Ozorne’s death. It had looked so ordinary.

“It was, but far too subtle. I told him to get rid of it and start again.”

Alex took a sip of his wine to hide his smile. Poor Thom.

“Did it look natural? I asked him to go with something more suggestive of a curse, or poison.”

“There were — spasms,” Alex replied, recalling that morning in the aviary. “His muscles started to go rigid before he’d even finished dying. I was going to put a writing brush in his hand, but I would have had to break his fingers to do it.”

Roger looked faintly surprised. “Were you really? That would have been a nice touch.”

“I thought so. As it was, I left the letter on his desk.” He had expected it to be harder to get into Ozorne’s rooms than it turned out to be. He had brought specially enchanted lock picks, Thom’s work again — but in the end, an old slave woman had let him in, no questions asked.

He didn’t want to remember how Ozorne had died. Something else occurred to him, and he smiled. “Did you know that Thom claims he was an expert forger at the age of ten?” he asked. “What kind of ten-year-old even decides to study forgery?” It had been a long voyage to Carthak, and he had found Thom’s company more bearable than that of most of the other ambassadors.

Roger looked almost puzzled for a moment, and then frowned. “Lucky for us that he did, or we would have had to call in someone else. I didn’t realize you’d grown so fond of him.”

Alex shrugged. “We shared a cabin. We had to talk sometimes. He was better company than the emperor, at least.”

“I’ve always thought so,” said Roger softly, still frowning at him.

“At any rate, the letter worked. But I suppose Thom already told you about the execution while we were still in Carthak, with one of those purple fires of his.”

Roger sighed. “He did, yes. It’s a shame, really — I rather liked Numair. But it was clear that he was going to become a problem, sooner or later. More wine?” he added, getting up from his chair.

Alex handed him his cup. “It was very tidy. That’s two fewer mages you need to worry about.” As a general rule, he disliked mages. They were the only group of people he had ever met who were capable of giving him the creeps.

He heard the wine splashing into the cups again; a moment later he felt fingers running through his hair, an expression of mingled dominance and affection. Roger tugged his hair slightly, and then let go and handed him his cup again.

He settled into his chair again as though nothing had happened, his expression closed-off and brooding. “I’m told there’s been utterly no trace of the girl. Nothing. It’s as if she’s vanished off the face of the earth. Tell me, Alex, how is that possible?”

“She probably turned into a rat and escaped down a drain,” he said, trying to suppress a shudder.

Roger rubbed his temples wearily, and sighed again. “I’m sorry. I don’t blame you. I suppose I miscalculated — I hadn’t realized how fond she was of him.”

“It’s all right.”

“I should have guessed she’d be that upset. Perhaps I should never have sent her to Carthak at all.”

“Who else was going to fix those birds? Personally, I thought it was useful having her there to distract Ozorne. Took some of the focus off me. Especially considering what I had to do to get close enough to kill him.”

Roger raised his eyebrows. “And what _was_ that, precisely?”

He stared grimly into the fire. “I pretended to be very, very interested in birds.”

“Ah. Of course. I was worried you’d had to seduce him.”

Alex studied him for a moment, frowning. There was no sign of worry on his face, only keen interest. “I think I did, actually. By the fourth day, he started dropping hints that he meant to keep me in Carthak, so I could be his little birdwatching companion forever.”

Roger chuckled. “That’s adorable.”

“I don’t think you quite understand,” said Alex in a low voice, bracing his elbows on his knees as he leaned toward him. “For nearly a week, I listened to him nattering on nonstop about parrots and finches and parrot finches and tanagers. I spent hours in the aviary at a time, just standing around and smiling. Hanging on his every word, like I couldn’t get enough of him. Do you even know what a tanager is? _I_ do, now.”

Roger snorted, an undignified noise for a king to make, and covered his mouth with his hand. “Gods, you’re so upset with me.”

“Roger, those birds _hated_ me. They were always screeching and shitting on me, while Ozorne cooed over them like they were his children.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Roger in a slightly strangled voice, before dissolving into laughter. “I’m so sorry.”

In retrospect, it was sort of funny. “It got in my _hair_ at one point,” Alex continued, struggling to hide a smile. “I didn’t even realize it until Duke Gareth asked if I’d been in the aviary.”

Roger inhaled deeply, his shoulders still quaking with silent laughter. “You think he suspects you?” he asked, in more sober tones than before.

Alex nodded. “He kept watching me on the voyage home. Made it harder to throw the knife overboard. I waited until he was asleep.”

“Well, there isn’t much he can do to you. He has no proof, and he doesn’t have the power at court he did in my uncle’s day.” He paused, studying Alex’s face. “If you like, I can help him forget his suspicions.”

Alex frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t worry. It won’t hurt him. I’ll only — blur a few memories from Carthak, you could say. He won’t even notice.”

“If you’re sure it won’t hurt him,” said Alex hesitantly. “Thank you.”

Roger smiled. “Of course. So, tell me, what do you think of the new emperor? ‘Emperor Kaddar’ has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Alex gave that some thought. He hadn’t disliked Kaddar at all, but the new emperor seemed very young to him, and that made him uneasy. But then, so had Ozorne, now that he thought about it. He must be getting old. “Better him than Ozorne, that’s for sure,” he said finally, and took another sip of his wine. “Cheers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arguably Ozorne deserved to be assassinated in cold blood; absolutely Alex deserved bird shit in his hair. It evens out, sort of.
> 
> Several lines of dialogue are taken from _Emperor Mage_ ; the passage about the black opals is adapted from something Numair says in _Lady Knight_.
> 
> There are a few discrepancies between books, I've noticed, such as the name of the capital of Carthak and what people from Tusaine are called. In this case, I chose to go with "Thak City" for the capital, mostly because that's what appears in the more recently published _Tempests and Slaughter_. In other cases, I may go with whatever term is more frequently used, or just whatever I like more; there is no rhyme or reason here, really. I'm trying to go for consistency rather than logic.
> 
> I feel that it's important to let you all know that the power went out twice in my neighborhood while I was trying to post last week's chapter, and the second time it happened specifically when I was trying to add that "implied Thom/Roger" tag. Boy does that feel like a sign.
> 
> Speaking of new tags, this AU has become so long that I needed to break it into parts (an ominous statement, given how long this first part is shaping up to be). There is no actual Thom/Alex in the first part, aside from what's in this chapter, but during the revision process they got flirtatious enough here that I felt the need for the tag.


	12. The Rising Water

**451 H.E.**

Maura of Dunlath glanced toward the open window again, but there was nobody there. She sighed, returning her attention to the household accounts. After more than a year, she had nearly finished putting them back in order. Lord Rikash had helped, of course, as had Finnian of Genlith, whom the king had sent to manage the Dunlath mine.

She’d done her best to persuade the king to let her fill the open-pit mines and instead give her people farmland north of the lake. Rikash had read over those letters before she’d sent them, suggested a few small changes, and told her he was proud of her diplomatic skills. In response, King Roger had sent Finnian and Sir Henrim, her new guardian.

He had also sent convicts to mine the opals, and an army company to guard them from the rebuilt northern fort. Maura had not been pleased to see any of them. Her only consolation was that the convict miners had begun by filling in the pit mines and digging the first subterranean shaft. When reading over her letter to the king, Rikash had pointed out that opals were not typically mined in shallow pits — the earthquake had disrupted the usual order of things, but there were likely far more gems that would never be found unless they dug deeper into the bedrock. Evidently that argument had seemed convincing to the king, enough to order a change in how opals were mined at Dunlath. Maura hated the new mine shaft, but at least it seemed less destructive than the field of pitted, ruined earth that had predated it.

She didn’t like either Finnian or Henrim very much. Lord Finnian was a cold, distant man who reminded her of her late brother-in-law Belden, but he was reasonable and cautious by nature. She had managed to convince him that the convict miners would revolt if they weren’t treated kindly, though she knew he thought her soft-hearted for insisting on it. And he had taught her how to do the household accounts, after Yolane had insisted on doing them all by herself for years, and made a mess of them.

Sir Henrim would be useful in a fight, she imagined, if only there were any fighting for him to do. At dinner he talked mainly of hunting and the various aspects of life at King Roger’s court that he missed. Beyond that he hardly said a word to Maura, which suited her fine. She didn’t have much to say to him either.

Her knight-guardian didn’t hunt the wolves. There had been an encounter with Brokefang’s pack, not long after he had first arrived from Corus, that had left Sir Henrim badly frightened of them. Maura still didn’t know all of the details. He had ridden out of sight of Tait and his dogs one cold October afternoon; the huntsman said that when he’d returned some fifteen minutes later, he was very pale and babbling about werewolves.

There came the sound of something heavy landing on her windowsill, and the clicking of steel feathers as wings folded. Maura looked up, smiling. Sir Henrim was frightened of the Stormwings too, as was Finnian of Genlith.

Lord Rikash smiled back at her from his perch on the windowsill. “Cold day to leave the shutters open,” he remarked, his talons clacking on the stone as he shifted from one foot to the other. “That knight of yours tried to shoot me as I flew over the courtyard, but he was too slow. You’d think he would have learned to recognize me by now.”

Maura’s smile faded. “I’ll have a word with Henrim about that.”

“I should like to see that. Considering I heard you recently had words with none other than the king, I think you’d be able to demolish a mere knight in short order.”

She winced. In September, the king had paid a visit to his daughter in the City of the Gods, and along the way he had stopped at Dunlath to see the mine. “I’m not really proud of that,” she said. “It was reckless. But I hardly had enough to feed him and his entourage as well as my own people, so I’m afraid I lost my temper a bit.”

“What did you say, precisely?”

“Only what I first told him, and what I’ve been telling Finnian for months now — that it’s better, now that we’ve transitioned to underground mining and stopped cutting down trees, but there’s still runoff from the mine that’s leeching into the lake. All the activity at the northern pass is still driving away game and taking up space that could be used for more farmland. If the harvest isn’t good enough, I risk beggaring Dunlath by having to buy food from other parts of the realm, and that’s assuming the passes are even clear enough for food to get to us before winter’s end. And any profit we get from selling opals to the crown is offset by the extra taxes we’ve been paying after what Yolane did, and by having to host the king and his courtiers whenever they come here on progress.”

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her frustration. She’d had to put things more delicately to the king and his representatives, and she was thoroughly tired of tiptoeing around men who didn’t want to listen to her, for fear of bruising their pride.

“Well, you’re still here,” said Rikash, “so it would appear His Majesty heard you out, at least.”

Maura tried to hide a smile at the mocking way he’d said the king’s title. She might not have liked Roger much — something about him reminded her too much of Tristan — but it didn’t seem respectful. “He seemed to be listening, to his credit. And he said that it would be best to keep the mining operation small for now, lest we exhaust Fief Dunlath of opal dirt within a few years. That was the best I could do with him, though I’m still working on Finnian.”

“So long as you’re careful.”

She heard pride in his voice as well as concern, and was touched by it. “I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon. I thought you’d still be in the south with Queen Barzha.”

“Skirmishes on the Scanran border,” he explained.

Maura frowned. “Sir Henrim’s been talking about that. It’s not a prelude to war, is it?”

“Who could say?” said Rikash, shrugging. “There’s always fighting along a realm’s borders.”

“I’d think if anyone could sense a war coming, a Stormwing could.”

“Well, I wouldn’t bet against a war,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t worry too much, if I were you. There are closer fiefs to Scanra, and you’re sheltered by the mountains to some extent. If worse comes to worst, you’ll have enough time to bring your people into the castle and destroy the causeway.”

The thought of Scanran invaders coming down from the northern pass made her uneasy. Not for the first time, she wished there had never been an earthquake, that they’d never found a single opal on her land.

“Never mind that now,” he said, hopping off the windowsill and into the air. Two beats of his wings brought him high enough to glide over to the perch she’d had set up for him next to the fireplace. Maura got up from her desk, puzzled.

“Shut the window, would you?” said Rikash. “Sorry about the smell, but I don’t want anyone to overhear this.”

She closed and latched the shutters before joining him beside the hearth, where a fire blazed against the chill of the winter morning. “What is it?” she asked.

He lowered his voice. “Have you heard from Daine at all?”

Maura shook her head. “Not since she left Corus. Finnian said she disappeared in Thak City, after . . . after what happened to Master Numair.”

Rikash raised his eyebrows. “Longshanks? He’s alive and well.”

She sat down hard in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace. “But they _said_ he’d been executed for killing the emperor. I didn’t really believe he did it, but . . . well, he’d have enough of a reason to.”

“He would have had to get in line — a long line. Even so, I don’t see him as a likely assassin. Someone more ruthless got the job done first, and tried to use poor Numair as a scapegoat.”

Maura nodded, grim-faced. “But he’s alive, you said. Truly?”

“I’ve seen him. He and Daine arrived in Tyra about a month ago, when my flock was still in the south near Pearlmouth. I flew over the border to find them, after I started hearing rumors of a girl with wild magic there, working as an animal healer in the capital. Evidently Master Numair was ready for _some_ kind of treachery in Carthak, and devised some magical decoy for them to execute instead.”

She shook her head slowly. “I was worried, when Daine wrote to tell me they were going into that nest of vipers. I guess they were worried too. But why didn’t she write, if she’s alive? Why doesn’t she come back to Tortall?” Letters were always delayed in the winter, she reminded herself; in another month she might receive a letter Daine had written to her back in November.

Rikash shifted from one foot to the other, his feathers clacking gently as he ruffled them. “Ah. Well, she may write to us in time, but for now she’s choosing to keep quiet. She certainly hasn’t forgotten you. She was even glad to see _me_.”

Maura frowned, and then gave his words some thought. “She’s frightened of whoever did kill Emperor Ozorne. Too frightened even to send a letter yet, because it might draw attention to her and Numair.”

He nodded. “It’s a bold move, killing an emperor in his own palace, and in the middle of peace talks. That’s a risk very few would take.”

“A madman, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” he said, his voice carefully light. “Or the action of someone very confident he would be protected.”

He read it on her face, she knew, when the realization sank in fully. “It solved a lot of problems for Tortall, when a new emperor came to the throne.”

“It certainly did, and quite neatly. There will be no war with Carthak now.”

“But surely King Roger didn’t want Master Numair to be blamed for it? He helped save Dunlath. He stopped treason being done. Surely the king wasn’t happy when he heard about the execution.”

Rikash looked troubled by what she’d said, and she knew she was being naive. “Rulers make hard choices, sometimes. Sometimes they have to weigh the life of one against the lives of many. Or at least, that’s how they see things.”

She understood that aspect of ruling herself, better than she wanted to. “Do you think you could explain some of that to the wolves? They’ve been upset, because we haven’t closed the mine, and I can’t figure out how to explain that I have to answer to the king, or else he’ll arrest me for treason and Dunlath will revert back to the crown. The ogres understand, but I don’t think Brokefang does. I wish I could talk to him the way Daine can.”

“I’ll do my best.” He cocked his head, still frowning. “Maura — be careful. After what your sister did, you can ill afford to anger the king.”

“I know.” She had a duty to the crown, and she was well aware of it; but she had a duty to Dunlath as well, and to her people there. Those duties seemed to conflict more often than she had thought they would.

In the heart of Tyra’s capital city, Daine threw open the shutters of her bedroom window and gazed out at the morning. It had rained sometime in the night, briefly clearing away some of the fog that hung over the canal beyond the street. Now the sun shone bright on a courtyard washed clean, every lingering drop of water on the grass gleaming like gold. If these clear skies held, it would be a fine day to set out for Tortall to rescue Cloud and the other horses.

She sighed. That would have to wait. It would be true winter in the north by now, making travel through Tortall difficult on horseback. Besides, the trip out of Carthak and across the Inland Sea had used up all of the money they’d had on hand, and Numair’s juggling skills could only take them so far. They had made it to a boardinghouse in Tyra, where she and Numair had agreed to stay for a while, until they’d saved up enough to travel further.

She had wanted to start going by her real name again when they reached Tyra — she was more than sick of hearing men with more weaponry than kindness sarcastically calling her Lady Veralidaine — but Numair had cautioned her against it.

“Roger has spies in every country,” he had pointed out, about a week before they had boarded the ship that would take them across the Inland Sea. At that point they were staying with one of Lindhall Reed’s friends and co-conspirators, in a house just outside Thak City. “And we’ll most likely be in Tyra for some time, unless Sir Myles can send funds to bring us back to Galla. We’ll be right across the border from Pearlmouth.”

She nodded, disappointed but seeing the sense in what he said. “What name are you going to go by?”

He poured them each some more Carthaki tea, a reddish, earthy drink that reminded her faintly of wandering the palace grounds under the hot sun. “I thought it would be wise to try to blend in, while we’re in Tyra, so I expect I’ll use an old family name — Metan or Iluya, probably. Those were my grandfathers’ names. And I may as well take on one of those classic descriptive mage names.”

“Like Stormweaver,” she said, recalling one of the mages they had met at the Tortallan court. “You told me you thought those were a bit silly.”

He smiled wryly. “I never did tell you what Salmalín means, did I?”

She shook her head. “Did you make up the same kind of name as old Willem Stormweaver and just disguise it in some ancient language?”

“By this point, you have earned the right to make fun of me as you please.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “You may wish to adopt a silly mage name of your own. If you do, you have my approval as your teacher.”

“But I haven’t finished my studies yet,” she pointed out.

“Your education has been — far from traditional, it’s true, but so are your abilities. You’ve had to deal with far more responsibility and hardship than the average mage does at your age and level of study — and you’ve risen admirably to the challenge. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve completed your apprenticeship.”

She stared at him. “In truth?”

“In truth. There are no official tests of mastery for wild magic at present, but if there were, I am confident you would pass them. You may consult the badger god if you like, but you have _my_ stamp of approval.”

Daine bit her lip, blinking away tears. “Thank you.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it briefly and then letting go. “To return to our previous topic of conversation, what do you think of Metan Nightshield? I want something that conveys a sense of defensive magic. After all, I spent a whole year dodging Roger’s questions about my proficiency with battle magic, and I’d rather not attract the attention of another bloodthirsty king if I can help it. Which reminds me — from now on, I’m not a black robe mage, only an ordinary red robe.”

She nodded. “Good thing we’re going to Tyra, where there are no kings at all, bloodthirsty or no,” she replied. “And I think it’s a very silly name.”

He took a sip of his tea. “Perfect. I like it, too.”

“Are there truly no kings in Tyra?”

“Not anymore. After the Eastern Empire broke up, it was ruled by a series of corrupt dukes jockeying for power, until they were overthrown and the Council of Seven was established.”

“Who’s on the Council?”

“What’s left of the nobility, as well as guild leaders and powerful merchants.”

She frowned, thinking that over. Tyra was a tiny country, flanked on all sides by far larger ones ruled by kings. “Why hasn’t Tortall annexed Tyra yet?”

Numair smiled. “Simply put, money. The Eastern and Southern Lands all keep a truly staggering amount of money in Tyran banks.”

“Of course,” she said, with a sigh. Everything came down to money, didn’t it? If they made it to Tyra at all on what little money they had left, their lack of funds would keep them there for months while they tried to earn more. “Should I start calling you Metan Nightshield now?”

He nodded. “It would help us both get used to our new names. My advice to you is to pick something similar to your real one, so you’ll answer to it unthinkingly. Sometimes I still turn around when I overhear someone calling a stranger anything that sounds like ‘Arram.’”

Daine thought for a moment, and then recalled a bedtime story her ma used to tell her sometimes. “Denya. It’s from a fairy story,” she explained, when Numair smiled quizzically at her. “She goes into the forest and meets the Black God himself, and answers his riddles correctly so he gives her a gift.”

He frowned slightly. “It doesn’t sound familiar, but it’s a good name — close without being too close.”

“And there’s a magic kettle and a silver bird that can’t tell lies, and then she saves the kingdom? You’ve really never heard it?”

He shook his head. “It must be a Gallan story.”

She sighed. “I might as well have a silly mage name, too, if I can’t use Sarrasri.”

“I’m afraid so. We have to assume Roger’s agents are on the hunt for you.”

That had already crossed her mind, but she didn’t like thinking about it. “Denya Silverwing, then. Oh dear, that sounds fake, doesn’t it?”

“A lot of mage names sound a bit fake,” he replied. “And yet everyone accepts them, because they’re backed up by magic.”

Two weeks after that conversation, she caught her first glimpse of Tyra: a sun-bleached city rising out of the sea. The capital had been built on a marshy river delta, with the Tortallan border so close she could see Pearlmouth in the distance. “This is where you were born?” she said, gazing toward Tortall with dismay as their ship approached the dock.

Numair nodded, idly waving away a mosquito. “It’s as hot and humid as I remember. Hard to believe we’re well into autumn.”

Leaning over the railing, she turned her attention to Tyra itself: a maze of canals and bridges defying the water at every turn. “Does it flood often?”

“Oh yes.”

Relying on old memories and a cheerful willingness to talk to strangers, Numair was able to find a reasonably priced boardinghouse within a few hours, in a neighborhood inhabited for the most part by quiet, respectable tradespeople. It was a few miles inland of the docks, and by the time they reached it, she was drenched in sweat that refused to dry.

The boardinghouse was run by a stern, middle-aged woman known as Mistress Zaman, who left bowls of food and water out in the courtyard every night for stray animals passing through, her sharp tongue not extending to them. She hadn’t even balked at the presence of Zek the marmoset, only asking what sort of food he liked and reminding Daine to keep her rooms very clean.

“I feel as though I’ve seen a glimpse of you in thirty years,” Numair had murmured to Daine, over supper at a nearby eating-house that first night. She stuck her tongue out at him.

Mistress Zaman had been pleased to learn that Daine was a healer of animals. At Daine’s request, she had set her up with a ground floor suite of rooms, with a sitting room where she could receive patients, a door that opened onto the courtyard, and an adjoining bedroom with a desk where she could continue her studies. Numair had a room just down the corridor; all Mistress Zaman had said to him, upon learning that he was also a mage, was not to do any big spells inside the house.

Having a door that opened onto the courtyard was a blessing. Mistress Zaman didn’t allow her to keep it open throughout the night, but she didn’t mind her leaving the shutters open in decent weather. “This house has more than enough in the way of protection spells,” she had assured her, when Daine asked her whether she worried about burglars. “Don’t worry, I have a mage come refresh them every six months.”

After washing up and dressing for the day, Daine found Numair seated in the common room at the other end of the corridor, writing a letter. “Who’s that for?” she asked him.

He paused in the middle of a sentence to take a sip of his tea, and then replied, “Sir Myles. I thought that while I’m stuck here among the merchants again, I might as well give him whatever Tyran news I can.”

Daine shook her head, smiling. Did Sir Myles have spies all over the Eastern Lands? She sincerely hoped that King Roger never found out about that. “I like merchants,” she confessed. “I’d rather have a council full of relatively ordinary people in charge, rather than one lone tyrant wearing a crown.”

“That’s fair,” he said, returning to his letter. “Still, I have more faith in the Council of Seven to waste their meetings in pointless squabbling and biting each other’s heads off than to actually get anything done.”

A new voice broke the stillness: one of the other tenants had overheard them. “Isn’t one good king better than a group of squabbling idiots?”

Daine glanced up, startled. The speaker, one of the few other people awake this early, sat one table away from theirs. She was a young woman, only a few years older than Daine, with black hair she wore piled up on top of her head and brown skin a shade lighter than Numair’s. Though she looked exhausted, she met Daine’s eyes calmly, her pointed chin lifted as though she were braced for a fight.

“I’ve spent time in four lands now,” said Daine, “under three different kings. They’ve ranged from decent to bad to worse. I’m not sure I’d even know a truly good king if I ever saw one.”

The woman shrugged. “A decent king is still better than a bad one, isn’t he?”

In Snowsdale, no one had really cared who sat on the throne in Cría. The local lords had more sway over their lives; a bad lord made far more difference than a bad king. Kings had only become real people for her after she had joined Sir Myles’s household, and things had gone downhill very quickly for her after that. “For rich folk, maybe,” she replied.

The woman smiled. “I suppose you have me there. You’re Mistress Silverwing, the healer, aren’t you?”

“Call me Denya,” said Daine, resigning herself again to her new name. “And you are?”

“Leyla Jupp.” She glanced at Numair, who didn’t look up from his letter.

“That’s Master Metan,” said Daine. “Don’t mind him, he gets very absorbed in what he’s doing sometimes. He teaches magic.”

“What?” said Numair absently. “Sorry. I’m listening, really.”

“Ah,” said Leyla Jupp. “Healing?”

Daine shook her head. “He teaches general magic, so he covers that, but his speciality is more esoteric magic. He’s always on the hunt for peculiar old manuscripts.”

Leyla Jupp took a sip of her coffee, her expression thoughtful. “You might try Binders Row, beyond the bridge just east of here. There are a number of booksellers down that way.”

Over the next week, Daine came to learn, from her extensive knowledge of local booksellers and from the frequent ink stains on her hands and aprons, that Leyla Jupp worked for a master printer along a nearby street, a cousin on her mother’s side. She rose early, crossing the courtyard in front of Daine’s window well before Daine was usually awake, and she usually returned after dark; but on her days off, she did her laundry in the courtyard fountain near Daine’s open door, and struck up conversations with her.

She liked to argue more than Numair did, but Daine enjoyed having someone else with whom she could have interesting conversations. And she liked that Leyla always had an opinion about everything, and was quick to smile and quick to offer Daine a hand with whatever she was doing. More than once, she abandoned her laundry to fetch gauze for one of Daine’s patients, or boil some water for another. And Zek was fond of her, which counted for something.

Her rooms were on the ground floor near Daine’s, and she often held small parties there. She had a wide assortment of friends: other printers’ apprentices and a few journeymen in the trade; students and mages; heralds and merchants; poets, musicians, and Players. Mistress Zaman didn’t like the noise or all of the strangers streaming in and out of the courtyard, but Leyla Jupp paid her rent on time every month and kept her rooms tidy, and so she remained.

One night, nearly a fortnight after they’d arrived at the boardinghouse, Daine was working late in her bedroom when she heard voices outside. Her bedroom shutters were closed to keep out the damp, but she had left her door open, and left the shutters of the sitting room window open beyond that. She was used to bitter Gallan winters, and it had been a warm day for the end of November, enough to leave her rooms hot and sticky as darkness fell. By now it had grown cool enough for sleep, and her lamp was beginning to burn low.

“ — harder to stir up excitement when we don’t know what we’re waiting for exactly,” a man was saying quietly, from the direction of the courtyard fountain. He sounded annoyed.

“The boy isn’t old enough to rule,” said a second unfamiliar male voice, patiently. “When he is, there will come a moment to strike.”

“There won’t, unless the people are ready for a change.” Daine recognized that third voice: it belonged to Leyla Jupp. She closed the book she’d been reading, listening carefully now. “Revolutions are about _people_. You can’t just put someone new in charge and hope for the best; you need to change hearts and minds first.”

“Lady Nasrin is busy trying to marry him off to some foreign princess,” complained the first speaker.

“She’s trying to gain _allies_ ,” retorted Leyla, and then her voice softened into amusement. “Go home, Benat, you’re drunk. If you want to help, write me another political ballad.”

In her bedroom, Daine dimmed her lamp and got up from her desk. She heard muffled footsteps in the courtyard, receding into the distance, and then the quiet squeak of the gate. Pulling her bedroom door shut behind her, to block out the light, she crossed to the window in the sitting room and peered out into the night.

“You overheard, didn’t you?” said Leyla, from just a few feet away. Daine jumped. “I suppose you think we’re trying to overthrow the Council now.”

Daine pulled on her boots and stepped out into the courtyard, where she found Leyla gazing up at the full moon, her hands in her pockets. “Are you?” she asked, shivering a little. Outside the air was cold and damp, as the mist rising off the canal gathered into fog.

Leyla turned to look at her, her smile barely visible in the moonlight. “Don’t worry, this doesn’t concern them at all. You’re Tortallan, aren’t you?”

Daine shook her head vehemently. “I’m Gallan.”

“Ah. I thought you had to be one of the two.” She studied her for a moment, considering. “What about your man? Carthaki, I’d wager.”

“He’s not my man,” said Daine, annoyed. “We’re friends, that’s all. I was his _student_ until very recently.”

There had been a time, while they were still living in Corus, when she’d started to find herself daydreaming over Numair more often than she liked — but that was past now, too. In the aftermath of what had happened in Carthak, the fear and uncertainty of figuring out how to make it out of the country alive, the intensity of her crush on him had faded. And there had been something about meeting Varice, and glimpsing the long history of her relationship with Numair in the way they acted around each other, that had driven his age home to Daine. She was on more equal footing with him now, a partner rather than a student, but she doubted there was romance in their future.

“Good,” said Leyla, “he’s much too old for you.”

“Why does it matter whether I’m Tortallan?” asked Daine, and then an idea suggested itself to her. “You’re not planning to overthrow the king there, are you? Are _you_ Tortallan?”

Leyla’s head snapped back at the last question, as though she’d punched her. “Certainly not. I’m Barzunni. My family fled to Tyra after the fall of the last king.”

Daine frowned, trying to recall the details of one of Sir Myles’s history lessons. If she remembered correctly, the conquest of Barzun had occurred around seventy or eighty years ago. That wasn’t so long ago, in the grand scheme of things. She wasn’t surprised to find there was still ill feeling among the descendants of those who had been conquered.

“So you’re not really trying to overthrow the king,” she said at last, feeling somewhat disappointed by this. “You’re only trying to free yourselves from Tortallan rule.”

“Exactly,” said Leyla, sounding suddenly weary. She hadn’t meant to tell her at all, thought Daine, but now she’d resigned herself to whatever consequences came of it.

“Has anyone considered putting something like the Council of Seven in charge, instead of a king?” asked Daine hesitantly. She wasn’t sure the success of the Tyran banking system could be repeated, but she’d rather see another republic come into being than another kingdom.

Leyla shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I’m just a printer. I don’t even know half the people involved in the revolution. And we do have someone with a claim to the throne.”

“Who, exactly?”

“The old king has a cousin who survived the conquest.”

Daine raised an eyebrow. “Who’s still a boy, from the sound of it.”

“Well, we’re a long way off from being able to put him on the throne. For now, we just need to keep him alive.”

“Does he know?” asked Daine, trying to imagine what it would be like to have people plotting to put you in charge of a whole country, and not even know about it.

“Not yet. His mother knows.”

Daine shook her head slowly. Had his lady mother raised him to rule from his cradle, without even telling him her plans? That seemed monstrous, but also in keeping with what she knew of most of the nobility. “You ought to tell him soon, so he’s prepared.”

Tilting her head back, she gazed up at the moon, which hung pale and heavy in the northern sky, shining even through the mist. “Well, I’m going to bed,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

**452 H.E.**

There was a summer cold going around, and all of Coram’s children had caught it now. Alanna rearranged her class schedule for the afternoon, managing to persuade Buri to take her wrestling class and Onua to take her magic class. The little school she and Thayet had started a decade ago had grown; she could take the whole afternoon off now. After making the necessary arrangements, she set off into the city with her healer’s bag and a few jars of soup.

With the last of Thayet’s jewelry, they had bought a farmhouse not far from the boardinghouse where they’d lived for a while after coming to Bajrapur. By that point, their landlady’s sitting room had been too small for all of the students Thayet had collected among the local children, and Buri had wanted more land for teaching riding lessons. They faced trouble with bandits and now immortals from time to time, living on the outskirts of the city as they did, but any bandits who thought a house full of women would make for easy prey were always quickly taught their mistake.

Buri had written to her relatives in Sarain, not long after the civil war there had officially ended, explaining where they had gone and what they were doing now. A year or so later, just before the mountain passes closed for the winter, they had received an unexpected visitor at their door: Onua Chamtong, one of Buri’s friends from among her mother’s tribe, who had recently left her abusive husband and was looking for work.

Not long after they left the boardinghouse, Coram had married Dipa, their former landlady’s widowed sister. Now he lived a few miles away with her and their children, closer to the heart of the city and uphill. Settling her healer’s bag on one shoulder and the basket full of jars on the other, Alanna gritted her teeth and began to climb. When they had first settled in Bajrapur, the dizzying array of steep alleyways and bustling streets had confused her after months on the road. These days it felt like home, and walking around the city only made her leg muscles burn.

“I suppose it’s good for me,” she muttered to Faithful, who trotted up the alley beside her.

 _Exactly,_ he said. _You spend far too much time lazing about._

“Come a little closer so I can kick you.”

Gray clouds hung low overhead, but she doubted it would rain. It rarely did, except in the spring. Bajrapur lay in the eastern shadow of the Roof of the World, which protected the city from the heavy storms that buffeted Port Udayapur and southern Sarain every year. The wind picked up as she walked along, carrying with it the scent of the river that ran through the heart of the city.

She found Coram in the kitchen, trying to boil water for tea. When she knocked on the door before pushing it open, he sneezed violently. “You should be in bed,” she observed.

He blinked watery eyes at her. “Hello to ye too. Can’t go to bed yet. Dipa needs some of that tea ye made, for her stomach,” he explained, switching midway through from thickly accented Bajrati to Common Eastern. The newer apprentices at the local forge usually found him incomprehensible.

Alanna frowned. “Morning sickness still? I’d hoped she would be over that by now. Well, at any rate I don’t want you making tea for her _now_. She doesn’t need a cold on top of everything else.”

He let her take the kettle from him. “Would ye look in on her? She couldn’t keep anything down all day.”

“Of course. Now hold still.” She put her hand on his shoulder, burning the cold out of him before he had time to sneeze again.

After Coram had washed up, she handed the kettle back to him, set the soup she’d brought to heating in the cauldron over the fire, and went up into the loft where the children slept, to put healing spells on them. The first to catch cold had been Harish, the older boy, who was turning fifteen later that month. A promising apprentice now at the forge where Coram worked, he tried to conceal himself under his blankets when he saw Alanna appear at the top of the ladder.

“Oh gods, it’s you,” he said, his voice muffled. “Don’t tell me you brought that horrible tea again.”

She leaned against the ladder, raising an eyebrow. “That tea you hate so much is what finishes off the healing spell. It strengthens your own ability to heal yourself. Without it you’re bound to get sick again in short order, and then I’m going to have to take time out of my busy day to heal you again. How many times must I explain this?”

He sighed heavily, and then let her place the healing spell on him. “How’s Jaya?” he asked her, as she placed the spell on his younger brother Kiran, who submitted calmly to it.

“Well enough,” Alanna replied. His older sister taught mathematics and thread magic now at the school, and boarded there with a few of the other teachers. “She says you ought to visit more often. There’s soup downstairs, you know. The K’miri kind you like, with the rice noodles. Have some tea, and you can have some soup.”

“Is Faithful here too, Aunt Alanna?” asked Kiran.

She smiled at him. “Yes, he’s waiting in the kitchen. If you drink all your tea, he might let you cuddle him.”

After the children climbed down from the loft, Alanna went into the bedroom on the ground floor, where Coram’s wife lay in bed. “I smell food,” she said, grimacing. Her dark skin had a faintly green undertone.

“I don’t remember you being ill for this long when you were carrying Kiran,” Alanna remarked, sitting down in the chair beside the bed. She took Dipa’s hands in hers, examining the other woman with her magic.

“I was when I was carrying Harish. It was awful.”

Alanna nodded distractedly, most of her attention on Dipa’s nausea. “The midwife didn’t find anything amiss then?” she asked, as she soothed Dipa’s stomach. She couldn’t find anything seriously wrong now.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t losing enough weight for her to be concerned about it, she said. I tried to throw up on her shoes when she said that, but nothing came up.”

Alanna grinned. “I’ll make you some tea that should keep your stomach at bay and bring your appetite back. If it’s not strong enough, send Coram to me, and I’ll give you a different tea.”

Dipa pushed herself up into a sitting position, looking intently at her. “Tell me you put a healing on that silly man. I heard him sneezing earlier when he was cooking breakfast.”

Alanna winced at the thought of Coram cooking them all breakfast while sick.

She stayed for supper, wanting to make sure they all ate before she left. The gray sky had cleared somewhat and was darkening into dusk when she set off for home, heading downhill toward the northeastern edge of the city. The moon was beginning to rise, full and golden, over the farmland and grassland that lay beyond; now and again clouds passed over it.

To the southwest, the city rose and fell, climbing the foothills toward the Roof of the World. Its dusty streets were crowded with gleaming pagodas, brightly painted shops, and narrow townhouses, all familiar sights to her now. On one of the taller hills stood the palace complex, where the lord of Bajrapur lived. Alanna had seen him a few times, riding through the city streets with his entourage, but only from a distance. These days, she preferred to keep her distance from the nobility.

Evening had summoned colder winds down from the mountains, harbingers of autumn. Hugging her soft woolen shawl more tightly around herself, Alanna began walking faster, her head bowed against the wind. “The children didn’t maul you too much, did they?” she asked her cat, annoyed by the drop in temperature. It was supposed to be summer. The narrow breeches and long tunic she wore under her shawl didn’t offer much protection against the wind. “Did they muss your fur?”

Faithful didn’t answer. He was gazing watchfully ahead, into the mist that had begun to drift over the road. That was odd this late in the day. When fog rolled in from the Chatra River, it did so around dawn and usually burned off before noon, even in the wet season. Alanna slowed her steps, one hand on the hilt of her sword now. With her other hand she reached for the red crystal pendant she wore under her tunic, the token the Goddess had given her years ago.

As the mist grew thicker, the back of her neck began to prickle. She sneezed, and the crystal grew suddenly warm in her hand, blazing with white light between her fingers. Alanna stopped and gritted her teeth, planting her feet as if for a fight, as the mist ahead of her darkened and solidified into the shape of a woman.

For an instant she saw the Goddess as someone who had been born and raised in the eastern shadow of the Roof of the World might have seen her: tall and impossibly beautiful, with warm brown skin and eyes as black as night, with red silk veiling her black hair as the clouds veiled the moon. Then the fog shifted, and she looked the same as she always had, pale as the moon in the gathering darkness. For a moment Alanna felt as though she were fourteen again, but then the feeling passed, leaving something harder to name in its wake. She knelt, ducking her head to hide her face, and realized, as though from a distance, that she was angry.

“You have traveled a long road since last we met, my daughter.” The Goddess’s voice hurt her ears; it called to mind baying hounds and storms that shook the Roof of the World. “I would walk with you for a time, so that we may talk. Where are you bound tonight?”

Alanna rose, struggling to keep her emotions in check. “Home, my Mother. It’s getting late.”

“It is,” the Goddess agreed, and if she were a mortal woman Alanna would have said she looked amused. “And you have someone to go home to, do you not? I am glad you have learned to love, despite the pain it has caused you.”

Alanna felt her face grow warm against her will, even as her heart clenched. She hadn’t felt the sting of Jon’s death so acutely in over a decade, but now that old, sharp pain mingled with the ache of everyone else she missed — Thom, Myles, George — and with the warmth that came when she thought of Thayet. “One out of three is a poor outcome, though,” she said, her voice sounding tense to her ears. She had never liked seeing her heart laid bare to anyone, even a goddess. “Considering I never did get my shot at the Chamber of the Ordeal, and my third fear conquered me.”

Frowning at that, the Goddess seemed to grow even taller. A colder wind whipped Alanna’s hair back, making her shiver violently. “Have you been conquered, my daughter? You are still alive, when the king of Tortall would much rather see you dead.”

Faithful strode toward her, mewing loudly. It was one of those rare moments when Alanna couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the Goddess regarded him thoughtfully. “You have reason to feel bitter,” she said at last, returning her attention to Alanna. “You felt, perhaps, that I had abandoned you. Given up on you, because you had failed.”

Alanna fought to remain standing under the force of her gaze. She was surprised to notice tears pricking her eyes, at hearing her own confused thoughts put into words, in a voice like a force of nature.

“Know this, my daughter: I have never left you, and I do not believe you have failed. But the gods do things in their own time, and you must take care not to forget that. Our sense of time is not yours. Walk with me for a while, for we must talk.”

She turned, and the wind changed. Alanna found herself following the Goddess down the road, toward home, before she had consciously decided to move her feet.

“Tortall will likely rip herself apart soon.”

Alanna felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. “There’s a civil war brewing? Why?”

“There is unrest in the south. Not merely conflict with the Bazhir, as you’re imagining — but along the southern coast, in the land that was once Barzun. Many of those who live there would like it to be Barzun again. The tides turn toward war, and Roger would fight the rising water.” She regarded Alanna with eyes greener than the richest forests. “It is his nature to fight when he should yield. You may have noticed that is a lesson I tried to teach you — when to fight something, and when to yield to it. You have learned that lesson better than he.”

Alanna considered this. “Would the south be planning to rebel now if Jon were king instead?”

The Goddess smiled, a little sadly. “Even the gods cannot see the future so plainly. We can see a short distance ahead, but not further. And often we find ourselves at a crossroad, where the future turns on the choices that mortals make. Mortal seers have the same difficulty, you know.”

Alanna nodded. “My brother used to get headaches. But I don’t, and I’ve had visions occasionally.”

“The visions you have had are suggestions more than anything else. Markers of interest on a map, for you to follow if you wish. Your brother experiences the same thing, but more frequently.”

A question occurred to Alanna, something she’d been wondering about for years. “Did you send me to that temple in Whitehall, all those years ago? So I would meet Eda Bell?”

The Goddess inclined her head, smiling slightly.

“Where would I be now, if I hadn’t met her on that day?”

“I cannot answer that with as much certainty as you wish me to. You were at a crossroad, after you left Tortall, and I tried to guide you toward a better future — for yourself, and for Princess Thayet. Without you, she would likely not have survived her journey out of Sarain.”

Alanna stopped suddenly. That had never occurred to her.

“True seers have a more difficult life than you or your brother have,” the Goddess continued, as she moved down the road toward Alanna’s home. “They are assailed by very detailed visions of different possible futures. It is the choices mortals make that determine which future will come to pass.”

“Sounds complicated,” said Alanna, hurrying to catch up with her. “And you can’t see what choices people are going to make?”

She shook her head. “The gods cannot interfere with mortals’ freedom to choose. It is possible, however, for us to gain a sense of which futures are more likely to come to pass than others. I can tell you this, at least: had Jon become king, it is likely he would have been able to keep Tortall united.”

A troubling thought had occurred to Alanna, gradually coming together while the Goddess spoke. “Of course, we’ve only been a united Tortall for about seventy years now. It’s not like we have much of a historical claim to Barzun.” From what she remembered of her history classes as a page, the invasion had occurred during a succession crisis. If Erhen II had managed to have any children who had survived to adulthood, Barzun might still have been a sovereign nation today.

The Goddess looked unconcerned by that point. “Kingdoms rise and fall. It is their nature. Once, not so very long ago, you were all one empire, together with Maren and Galla. Perhaps Barzun will rise again, but who can say which country has the right of it?”

“Do they have a leader to rally around?” She was trying to remember the Tortallan genealogy she had learned as a child and not thought about much in years. King Jasson’s queen had been a Jesslaw, and she was fairly certain the main branch of Jesslaws was still around. But they hadn’t been closely related to King Erhen, had they?

“They do. You have not met the current Voice of the Tribes, have you, among the Bazhir?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never met any of them.”

“Ah, that is where you are mistaken, my daughter. You met Ali Mukhtab in Persopolis when you were a child, when he was the governor there.”

Alanna stared at her. “He never told me!”

“No,” agreed the Goddess, “he always liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Do you know anything about the current Voice?”

Alanna tried to recall whether Sir Myles had mentioned anything about him in passing, in any of his letters. “No, I don’t think so,” she said finally, and then remembered something from a letter she’d received back in Maren. “Wait, wasn’t he Tortallan on one side?”

“His father’s family is House Pearlmouth,” replied the Goddess. “He is a fine Voice, well loved by his people.”

Alanna considered that. Pearlmouth was a minor noble family in the far south, taxed into poverty by King Jasson in the wake of the conquest. From what she recalled, the real power in the city that bore their name was the merchant class. “Would the Voice have any claim to the Barzunni throne?” she asked. “I thought the royal family was gone now, except maybe for the Jesslaws. But they’re distant cousins, aren’t they?”

“There is a minor branch of the royal house that survives, though Danyal of Pearlmouth does not belong to it. The descendants of the last king’s third cousin live in Maren now. King Jasson did not realize that cousin was placed before Queen Daneline’s family in the line of succession, I believe, or else they would likely have suffered a worse fate than heavy taxation.”

Alanna winced.

“The third cousin’s granddaughter married the lord of Queen’s Harbor in Maren,” the Goddess continued, “so the family is no longer impoverished. She bore him three daughters and a son, who is on the verge of manhood.”

“So the Barzunnis have a king,” said Alanna uneasily, “if they can persuade him to return to Tortall. Or if Roger doesn’t have him killed when he realizes there’s war on the way.”

The Goddess’s smile was cold. “King Roger may have more to worry about soon than Kouray of Queen’s Harbor. Scanra is beginning to nibble away at his northern border. The king of Galla is displeased with him, and in the south his new ally, Emperor Kaddar, faces rebellion in Carthak.” Her smile faded. “I am truly sorry about Prince Jonathan, you know. He was the king I had wanted for Tortall.”

Then you should have _done_ something, Alanna thought, to protect him. She nodded, too choked up to speak for a moment.

“Are you happy here, my daughter? I am glad to see that you have built a life for yourself. You have people to love here, and a purpose. You do important work, work that builds up lives rather than destroying them — healing, teaching. Fighting when you must, to defend what is yours. And yet you have not achieved everything you set out to do. Are you content with that?”

These were thoughts Alanna didn’t like to dwell on. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Most of the time, I think I am. But sometimes . . . What would you have me do, Goddess? I’ll tell you the truth, sometimes I think of going back to Tortall and killing him. But I don’t think I could get away with it.”

“It would not be easy,” the Goddess agreed. “And I believe that setting out to take a man’s life would trouble you deeply, were you to achieve your goal. Assassination is a very different thing than killing a foe in battle.” She sighed. “My daughter, I cannot tell you what you should do. That is your choice to make, and I would not take it from you even if I could.”

“Can you give me a hint?”

The Goddess smiled. “No matter which direction you take, I believe you will find an interesting road. But if you were to set out on a long journey soon, it may be worthwhile to put aside your dislike of sea voyages, at least for a short time. I wish you well on your travels, my daughter,” she added, as she began to fade away into the darkness. The last image Alanna had of her was one of moonlight gleaming on the road, brighter than she’d ever seen it before, as a bitter wind swirled down from the Roof of the World.

When she was gone, Alanna turned to Faithful with a puzzled frown. “What do you suppose she meant, about short sea voyages? And what were you saying to her earlier?”

Her cat stared up at her, his eyes glinting in the darkness. _You forget sometimes that she is not a mortal woman._

“No, I don’t.”

_You have never seen a god in her full power. I merely reminded her of that fact, and that you are motherless._

Annoyed, Alanna stalked off toward home, and her cat followed. The little house behind the school building was dark when she let herself inside, with a lamp burning in the kitchen to welcome her. She blew it out after bolting the door behind her.

She found Thayet in bed, curled up on her side and reading by lamplight. She sat up when Alanna walked in, setting aside her book and smiling. “How are they?” she asked.

For a moment Alanna was confused, and then she remembered her visit to Coram’s house. “They’re doing much better,” she said, taking off her shawl. “Dipa’s stomach was bothering her again, but at least she hadn’t caught cold like the others.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Come to bed, it’s freezing outside. If it rains, we might get one of those rare summer snowstorms in the hills.”

If there was one thing Alanna still missed about the palace in Corus, it was having a proper fireplace in every room. Shivering, she cleaned her teeth and undressed hurriedly before climbing into bed, half her mind still in some other place, or some other time.

“You’ve got that look on your face again,” said Thayet, as Alanna settled down beside her. “Like you’re planning some new project. What are you thinking of?”

“I met the Goddess again tonight.”

Thayet’s eyes widened. “Horse Lords,” she breathed. “What did she say?”

Alanna told her about their conversation, in as much detail as she could. There was something about meeting a god that she couldn’t put into words; she’d observed that many years earlier, when she had finally told Thayet about her first encounter with the Goddess.

“For years I wondered if she’d abandoned me,” she said, a little absently, as Thayet slid her arm around her. Alanna leaned her head on Thayet’s shoulder, smiling slightly when she felt Thayet begin to stroke her hair.

“I was always told that gods have their own sense of time.”

“She said something like that.”

Thayet sighed. “I’ve wondered sometimes if you’d rather still be on the road — if we only settled down here because I wanted to.”

Alanna lifted her head to look at her, surprised. “You know that’s not true. We decided on this together.”

“I don’t mean I’m worried you’ll leave. I just wonder if you get — restless, sometimes. When we were young, we were planning on seeing the world together.”

Alanna frowned. “That’s true, we were. I suppose I am, sometimes.”

“Buri’s restless, though she avoids mentioning it.”

Alanna grinned. At least once a week, when her students wouldn’t listen to her or the rushes strewn over the kitchen floor needed replacing again, Buri threatened to ride off into the desert and not stop until she reached the eastern coast of Jindazhen. “It’s her demure, selfless nature.”

“You’re cold,” Thayet observed, rubbing her bare shoulders. “She unsettled you, didn’t she? The Goddess, I mean.”

She nodded. “I keep thinking about what she said just before she disappeared — about putting aside my hatred of boats, for a short time.”

“Those were her exact words?”

Alanna lay back, pulling the blanket up to her chin and smiling when Thayet curled up beside her. “Well, she said sea voyages.”

Thayet frowned, thinking. “The shortest sea voyage from here would take you to Yamut.”

“Is that in Carthak?”

She nodded. “On the northeastern coast. You know, I have a cousin in Yamut,” she added, looking faintly surprised. “Gods, I haven’t thought about Kethia in years. She married a nobleman there, and left court when I was — twelve? Thirteen, I think. I wonder how she’s doing.”

“You should write to her,” Alanna suggested, and then yawned suddenly. “I’m exhausted.”

“It’s getting late,” said Thayet, sitting up again to dim the lamp. “We should get some rest.”

The letter arrived on a gray morning in early October, just as a brief scattering of rain blew in from the north. Alanna was in the kitchen when it arrived, delivered by a local boy who worked as a message rider for the blacksmiths’ guild Coram belonged to. When her tea had finished steeping, she sat down at the table beside the hearth, where a cauldron full of goat curry was simmering, and began to read.

> _Sister dear,_
> 
> _Hope you and yours are well. Fought off any bandits lately?_
> 
> _Things are an absolute whirlwind here, now that summer’s winding down to a close and I have to start preparing to teach the pages basic magic again. I can’t even tell you how busy I am trying to get the new university up and running. I have real sympathy for you now, with your pack of students and teachers. I had no idea how much work administration was until now, and delegation doesn’t help. Everyone I put in charge of one thing or another is constantly coming to me about their problems. At least I rarely have to deal with the students — I put Harailt of Aili in charge of that, after Old King Smiley set his sights on the poor man and appointed him Lord High Chancellor of the mages last year._
> 
> _Speaking of Old Smiley, I have some news to tell you, and I doubt you’re going to like it. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just put it in plain Common: Roger’s changed the law so that girls can train for knighthood again. Perhaps I ought to have told you sooner — there’s a chance you’ve already learned it from Myles — but I wasn’t eager to upset you. I’ve heard tell that a girl from a barony near Trebond has applied to become a page. Reportedly she’s the daughter of the ambassador who_

Alanna looked up, staring into the fire without seeing it. Roger had what? She looked down again, rereading that line. “No,” she murmured, feeling oddly numb.

He had changed the law. Tortallan girls could openly train for their knighthood now.

The feeling returned suddenly to her limbs, hot rage coursing through her veins. Snarling a curse, Alanna crumpled the letter into a ball and hurled it into the fire, and then threw her half-finished cup of tea after it. Tea splashed over the packed earth and rushes; the cup shattered against the side of the cauldron. She stared at its remains, breathing hard.

She heard footsteps. “What’s going on?” said Thayet, sounding alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“I broke a cup,” said Alanna absently, as she watched Thom’s letter burn.

Thayet sat down beside her, glancing into the fire before turning back to her with a look of worry. “What _happened_? Was that a letter? I saw Akhil ride away.”

Alanna’s eyes widened suddenly. “I threw Thom’s letter in the fire. I hadn’t even finished _reading_ it. Gods . . .”

She slid off her chair and knelt on the rushes, distantly feeling tea soaking into her breeches as she tried to fish the letter out with the fireplace poker. Most of it crumbled away, already burned to ash.

“What was in it?”

The letter burned her fingers. As she dropped it on the bare earth at the edge of the hearth, she caught half of Thom’s question about bandits, which seemed to mock her now. The rest had burned away. She groaned, hanging her head.

“It was from my brother,” she said, looking up at Thayet. “He writes that girls can openly train for knighthood now in Tortall.”

Thayet blinked. “How did that come to be?” she asked, sounding bewildered.

“Apparently the king changed the law.”

“ _Roger_?”

“That’s what he says.” Alanna gazed into the fire, recalling the day Roger had dragged her before King Roald, the way his fingers had tightened around her arm like a vise. “He called me an unnatural creature of Chaos and an affront to the Gentle Mother.”

“What?” said Thayet, sinking to the floor beside her.

“Roger, I mean. When he unmasked me before King Roald.” She exhaled sharply: a brief, humorless laugh. “Apparently he changed his tune about that.”

Thayet shook her head, her lips pursed. “That monster. Why would he change the law?”

“Who knows? To spite me, I suppose.” She looked down at the remains of the letter, regret surprising her through the haze of her anger. “It’s October. She’s probably at the palace now.”

She turned to look at Thayet again, feeling suddenly horrified. “Thom said there’s a girl who’s applied to become a page. His letter was from August, maybe the beginning of September. She’s probably already started her training. She’ll be all alone, surrounded by boys in that pit of vipers — gods, I don’t even know her _name_. I threw the letter in the fire before I finished reading it.”

Thayet gazed back at her, sympathy in her eyes. “Write back to your brother. He’ll tell you about her.”

Alanna nodded. “It’s all I can do, really. I just hope she isn’t gone by then.” What kind of boys thrived as pages and squires at Roger’s court? She could only imagine Alex and Ralon of Malven, reflected back on themselves as if they stood in a hall of mirrors. “Gods, they’ll drive her out.”

“What if they don’t?” said Thayet, taking her hands in hers. “She must be brave, to want to be the first girl page since the king changed the law. Maybe she’ll be like you, and fight anyone who tries to bully her into leaving.”

“She’ll have to be.” Alanna sighed. “I’m sorry about the cup.”

“Don’t be,” said Thayet, squeezing her hands. “It was only a cup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made the executive decision to just dodge the question of which fief Henrim belongs to. It's not explicitly mentioned in _Lioness Rampant_ , but the Tortall fandom wiki lists him as a member of Fief Tirrsmont. I'm not sure why, because I can't find a clear source for this, and it's not really in keeping with the portrayal of Fief Tirrsmont in the Kel books. It's a puzzle and a mystery.


	13. Snow Like Sugar Frosting

**452 H.E.**

Alex was not looking forward to winter on the Gallan border. His recently broken rib still ached on cold days, and the days grew ever colder in their march toward Midwinter, but Roger had wanted him to pay a visit to Fief Dunlath before year’s end. Among the tax records and other important documents the palace mice had senselessly devoured back in October was every scrap of information relating to the Dunlath mine, and Roger was eager to rebuild those records.

Though not usually a man for praying, Alex had begun directing prayers to just about every god he’d ever heard of that the snow wouldn’t trap him in Dunlath Castle until spring. If he were stuck there with just Lady Maura and Lerant, it wouldn’t be so bad, but the castle was also home to a mouthy Stormwing, his former squire Henrim, and Finnian of Genlith, a man with an abacus for a heart.

At first, Lady Maura had seemed faintly worried to see them, but now she was making the best of their presence. “More cider?” she offered them, in the hours leading up to dinner on that first night. “Or would you prefer wine?” Outside, the snow that had begun to drift down as they’d ridden over the causeway fell steadily, blanketing the castle grounds.

“Wine for me, milady,” said Lerant, looking heartened by her offer. “Thank you.”

“Cider, please,” said Alex, “for both of us.” He didn’t like drinking wine or ale on an empty stomach, and he wasn’t about to let a fourteen-year-old squire do it. Lerant could have a small cup of wine with dinner, but only if he behaved himself.

Lerant frowned at him. Alex met his eyes, raising his brows to suggest that Lerant was lucky that the lady had insisted he sit down in front of the fire and relax, instead of serving them as was proper for a squire to do.

A maid refilled their cups. After Maura had quietly thanked her, Alex cleared his throat. “Forgive us for dropping in on you like this, my lady. The king requested that we pay a visit to Dunlath Mine on our way to the Gallan border, and I myself wished to visit my former squire, Sir Henrim.”

Lerant frowned again, his eyebrows knitting together, but Maura only smiled demurely. “He’s mentioned you once or twice,” she said.

Once or twice a day, more likely. No matter how poorly Alex had treated him as a young man, Henrim had been bragging about his knight-master since Roger’s coronation. He took a sip from his cup of cider, wondering whether those thoughts were unkind. After all, it was possible that Henrim had changed somewhat, over the years. The cider was warm and spiced, very welcome after a long day of riding through the mountains in November.

“The weather may keep you here for a day or two before we can view the mine,” said Maura, with a glance toward the window. “Of course, you’re both welcome to remain at Dunlath for as long as you wish. We have plenty of room.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Alex.

While they drank their cider, she asked them a few polite questions about life at court. She was better mannered than Alex had expected, for a country noble girl he’d met only once before, shortly after she’d blown up a fort, and she was quite good at pretending to be interested in his laconic answers. Even so, he was grateful for Lerant, who could elaborate on things like parties and court gossip and his squire training — things she seemed genuinely interested in. It was a shame she had no friends here her own age, no cousins as he’d had growing up.

“I’m sure you’d both like to rest before dinner,” she said after a while, giving them leave to retire to their rooms. He and Lerant had been placed in a large, richly furnished suite of rooms just down the corridor from where Henrim resided.

One of the servants had already drawn a bath in Alex’s dressing room. Left alone there, he stripped off his travel-worn clothes and sank gratefully into the water. At some point he dozed off, and awoke suddenly to someone shaking his shoulder. His wild swing missed Lerant, who dodged his fist with ease.

Alex stared up at him, his heart pounding. “Gods, Lerant, I’m sorry. What time is it?”

Lerant raised an eyebrow with enough cool disdain that he felt a momentary urge to swing his fist at him again, followed by a wave of shame. “Time to dress for dinner, my lord.”

At dinner, Alex was seated next to Lady Maura, with Henrim on his other side. Below the table on the dais, where the nobility dined, there were rows of smaller tables lining the great hall. At Dunlath, servants and men-at-arms dined with their lady, and Alex was glad for their warmth and distant conversation. Without them, the hall would have felt colder and grimmer, and he would have been able to hear Henrim’s incessant chatter more clearly.

After dinner, he and Lerant passed a pleasant evening in the lady’s sitting room, playing chess with her and Finnian of Genlith while a fire crackled merrily in the hearth. For a while Henrim watched them, before declaring that he was bored and going to bed.

The snowfall ceased at some point during the night. When he opened his shutters in the morning, Alex saw the extent of the damage and winced. The snow would confine them to the castle for at least another few days. Resigning himself to a quiet day with the household accounts, he dressed warmly and headed down to breakfast.

To his surprise, Lerant had reached the great hall before him. “I’m glad you were able to see Dunlath in the wintertime,” Lady Maura was saying to him as Alex approached the dais. “It’s so beautiful here after a recent snowfall.”

Alex smiled politely at her, trying to hide his dismay over the weather. “Good morning.”

By early afternoon, he was tired of being inside. After finding a door that hadn’t been barred shut by snow drifts, he trudged out to the archery court used by Dunlath’s men-at-arms, to stubbornly ignore the weather for an hour or so.

He also did his best to ignore the Stormwing who had followed him to the archery court. Alex had the general idea that the creature was some sort of pet of Maura’s. He knew he’d seen him somewhere before, probably the last time he had visited Dunlath. The creature perched on the fence around the court, watching him practice, with snow dusting his long blond braids. After a while he said, “Aren’t you a southern lad? I thought you wouldn’t like the cold.”

Alex did not reply.

“Ah, you’ve chosen to pretend I’m not here. I suppose that’s better than trying to shoot me.”

When he went back inside, half-frozen now, Alex found Lerant prowling the castle corridors. His squire jumped when he saw him, startled. “What are you looking for?” asked Alex, suspicious.

Lerant avoided his gaze. “The tower,” he mumbled.

“What tower, squire?”

He sighed. “The tower where those mages were said to have brewed a potion that would have poisoned all of Tortall.”

If Alex remembered correctly, the expected range of the bloodrain had been closer to a hundred square miles. “Who told you about that?”

“Sir Henrim.”

Alex groaned. How that man loved to talk. “I think it’s unwise to discuss Yolane and Belden’s treason openly during our stay at Dunlath,” he said in an undertone. “People have the idea that treachery is something carried in the blood.”

“But Lady Maura helped stop them,” protested Lerant. “She’s a hero.”

“I’m afraid there are some who don’t see it that way. At any rate, don’t go looking for trouble.”

Lerant nodded, and Alex hoped he would listen to him. Dunlath Castle was not very large for a ducal keep, but it wouldn’t be difficult for a stranger to get lost in it, and find himself somewhere he shouldn’t be. The corridors were shadowy and labyrinthine, like those of other cold, grim northern castles he’d visited over the years; as he walked along them, Alex often had the sense that someone was watching him from just out of sight.

It was only the mice, he reminded himself, after turning around suddenly, halfway down a corridor, and seeing a small dark shape scuttle away. That thought didn’t soothe him; the memory of the palace mice destroying the tax records and his best saddle and tack was too fresh.

Returning to his room after breakfast the next morning, he managed to get turned around, and find himself at the end of a long, deserted corridor, at the base of a spiral staircase. Alex stood there for a moment, gazing up into darkness, remembering his last visit to the castle. He was fairly certain he’d found the tower Lerant had been looking for.

Here was the window that overlooked the curtain wall, shuttered now against the cold; surely these were the stairs he had climbed after the battle at the southern fort, to view the Coldfang’s body. He wondered what Maura had done with its remains.

He must have taken a wrong turn at the last gallery he’d passed through. Turning away, he resolved to never mention the tower to anyone, least of all his overly curious squire.

“ _Alex_.”

He froze, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. As he turned around, wide-eyed, the hoarse whisper came again, repeating his name. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“ _Go_.”

It was coming from the spiral staircase, from somewhere just beyond the first turning. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like a woman’s voice. Feeling a chill, he remembered Lady Yolane cursing his name as he’d led her away from Dunlath Castle in chains. He had watched her execution, standing grim-faced beside the king on Traitor’s Hill.

“Who are you?” he asked, but the voice didn’t reply. Slowly, he backed away, and then turned and hurried back down the corridor.

While they were kept inside the castle walls over the next week, Alex spent most of his time going through the household accounts, paying particular attention to those related to the mine. He was relieved to find no fault with them, no discrepancies. He had grown fond of Maura, and would have hated to see her end up like her sister had.

“This all seems to be in order,” he said, when he had finished looking everything over. He smiled at her, and she smiled back at him, looking relieved. “Have copies of these made, and give them to the tax collector the next time he stops by.”

Apparently he was not the only one who was fond of Maura. Over dinner, whenever Henrim briefly spared him from conversation by taking a bite of his meal, Alex found himself listening to Maura and Lerant, with a faint smile. His squire usually thought him too grim to laugh and joke with; it was nice to see how he was with someone he could relax around. On the fifth night, as the intermittent snow warmed into rain, he listened to Lerant tell Maura a story about the day he and some of his friends at the palace had discovered there were leeches in the swimming hole.

“— can’t find a decent tailor for at least fifty miles,” Henrim complained, drowning out Maura’s peal of laughter and shattering Alex’s feeling of contentment. “Fortunately I don’t _need_ decent clothes in a place like this, but —”

After dinner, Alex retired to his sitting room with Lerant in tow. “You seem to be getting on well with Lady Maura,” he remarked, as they went up the narrow staircase. Feeling someone’s gaze on him again, he glanced quickly over his shoulder, and saw luminous green eyes watching him from the shadows.

He tensed. A cat. It was only a cat. He turned away again, taking the stairs two at a time now.

“She’s — easy to talk to,” Lerant stammered, as he hurried to catch up with him. “It’s nice. A lot of girls aren’t so easy to talk to. And she’s very clever. Of course, I suppose she must be, to run a fief by herself.”

Alex glanced at him, frowning. Even in the dim light of the stairwell, he could see that Lerant’s face was slightly red. “She does have Finnian of Genlith to assist her,” he pointed out.

“I thought he was just here for the mine.” Lerant glanced sidelong at him. “Sir Henrim doesn’t help with the household accounts?”

“I rather doubt it.”

“Whyever did you take him as a squire, my lord, if you think he’s such an idiot?” Lerant murmured.

Alex sighed. “He’s my cousin.”

Lerant’s eyebrows ascended slightly. “Is he really? That explains a lot.”

“Third cousin once removed, if I recall correctly.” He paused, studying Lerant thoughtfully for a moment. “Let me give you some advice: after you’re knighted, don’t take a squire immediately. Give yourself at least a few years, to gain some distance and experience.”

He continued climbing the stairs, and Lerant followed him. “Is that how you ended up with Sir Henrim?”

Alex nodded. “He wasn’t my first squire, mind you — he was my second. My first squire was Geoffrey of Meron. Some of my year-mates and I made a pact, of sorts, to take our younger friends as squires after our Ordeals. I picked the boy whose family’s fief bordered on mine.”

“That was his only qualification?” said Lerant under his breath.

“It didn’t go very well, as you might imagine,” Alex continued, as he reached the top of the stairs. “I was as green as they come, and inexperience made me harsh at times. He’s taken me to task for it since then — said I was too hard on him.”

Lerant watched him, frowning slightly, but wisely held his tongue. Alex stopped again, meeting his eyes. He wanted him to listen carefully to what came next. “I won’t deny I could have done better by him. But do you know what happened, scarcely two years after he was made a squire? The Tusaine War began, and Geoffrey rode off to battle alongside me. He survived. Was I too hard on him? Perhaps. He ought to have had a better knight-master than me, fresh out of the Chamber of the Ordeal and scared witless I was about to get him killed. For his sake, I’m sorry I chose him. But being strict with your squires is what keeps them alive. Remember that, when I make you build and rebuild a campfire in the freezing rain, to make sure you can do it well.”

He turned away, leading his squire down the darkened corridor toward the guest quarters. “That may be true, my lord,” said Lerant, “but it doesn’t make you easier to live with.”

He was tired of making speeches. “If you wanted someone who was easy to live with, you ought to have chosen a desk knight,” he replied, annoyed.

“You chose _me_ ,” Lerant muttered.

Delia had, in fact, arranged their partnership, but Alex held his tongue. “Do you recall the calculations I showed you last night, for feeding a household through the winter?” As he opened the door to their sitting room, he caught a glimpse of something small and dark darting across the flagstones to vanish into the shadows. A mouse, surely.

“Yessir,” Lerant replied, looking resigned to an evening of mathematics.

As he sat down by the fireplace with his chalk and slate, he remarked, “You know, this is what Lady Maura does. I think it’s obvious, when you listen to her talk about it, that she does most of the work of running Dunlath herself.”

There was something about the defiant way he said it that clarified something for Alex. “You’re too young for romance,” he said wearily.

Lerant’s face grew even redder. “I’m fourteen.”

“And Lady Maura is only twelve.”

“But she’ll have to make a good match. Her father was a duke.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. He knew that Delia and her brother were already considering future brides for Lerant, but that didn’t make him old enough to be thinking seriously about marriage himself. And Delia was undoubtedly considering beautiful girls from prominent families, not plain, stocky country girls with treason in their blood. “She’ll try to make one, I’m sure. But I doubt any great families want to link their houses with Dunlath these days.”

Lerant frowned at his slate, his jaw set stubbornly and his cheeks still ablaze. “Well, I think she’s charming,” he said finally.

Alex shook his head, baffled. At Lerant’s age, he had been intermittently tormented by vague and confusing daydreams about his friend Gary, in which they’d had to huddle together for warmth in a cave during a snowstorm. He had never daydreamed about someone like Maura. “You shouldn’t be thinking about romance until after you’ve won your shield.”

“Do you say that to all your squires?”

“I certainly do.” He smiled faintly, remembering something. “Henrim spent nearly four years driving himself to distraction over the queen and her ladies, at the expense of his sword work. I’m not sure your aunt even noticed he existed.”

Lerant shook his head, looking faintly disgusted. “Don’t you remember what it’s _like_ being fourteen?”

“Of course I do. _I_ was always able to focus on my work.” He peered down at the slate, checking Lerant’s calculations. “You’ve made a division error here.”

By their seventh day at Dunlath Castle, the snow had cleared enough for them to pay a visit to the mine. After crossing the causeway, they rode through the village and north along the lakeshore road. Their company was small, consisting of Lady Maura, Alex and Lerant, Finnian of Genlith, Henrim, and a squad of Dunlath men-at-arms. As they approached the mine in the early afternoon, the road began to climb toward the northern pass. They paused for a moment on the rise overlooking the northern fort, the mine, and the building that housed the convicts who labored there.

The northern fort had been repaired and enlarged after the battle at Fief Dunlath two years ago, the southern one rebuilt entirely. From the rise, the northern fort looked spacious and well-built, with a formidable log palisade surrounding it and soldiers in regular army maroon watching from the top of the wall. Even so, Alex wouldn’t want to be stationed there. Yolane and Belden had cleared the ground around the mine, but they hadn’t thought the way warriors did. The convict miners had filled in the pit mines, but the bare ground was still sunken where they had been, and littered with piles of earth and rock dug out of the mines. Trees loomed beyond the clearing, too close to the log palisade for his liking. There were too many places for an enemy to hide.

A horn call sounded: the soldiers on the wall had spotted them. One of Lady Maura’s men-at-arms responded with a horn blast of his own, signifying that they were friends.

There was no sign of activity around the mine entrance, suggesting that it had been closed. Finnian of Genlith, noticing the direction of Alex’s steady gaze, cleared his throat anxiously. “My lady has ordered the mine closed until the weather grows a little warmer,” he said apologetically. “I had thought that today we might open it again, but she says no.”

“I won’t work anyone to death in the winter,” said Maura, sounding a little distracted. “They may be convicts, but they’re my people now.” Riding sidesaddle on her small white mare beside Alex, she gazed into the line of trees to the west of the fort.

Alex followed her gaze, wondering what she was thinking of. As far as he could tell, there was nothing there, save for miles of dense northern forest and the rising mountains. “Fair enough,” he said. Roger may have disagreed, but Roger wasn’t there; and unlike his king, Alex didn’t care one bit how many opals were hauled out of the earth at Dunlath. “I’d like to see the fort now, and then the mine.”

The man in charge at the fort, Captain Elbridge, gave them a tour of the place. Up close, it was as well-built as it had looked from afar, which didn’t surprise Alex. Northern woodworkers were said to be the best in Tortall. The company sent to guard the mine and its convict miners would be comfortable there through the long winter. Even the convicts might be comfortable, in their sturdy log building next-door. Alex eyed it as he followed Maura and Finnian out of the fort and toward the mine, trying to gauge how easy it would be for attackers to break the convicts out during a fight.

Maura’s Stormwing pet had followed them north, gliding lazily above the lakeshore road, close enough for the lady to converse with him at times. The creature declined, however, to follow them into the mine. Alex glanced back toward him as they walked away from the fort, leaving the horses inside to rest. The Stormwing had landed on the wall when they’d arrived, startling the soldiers posted there. There he remained, preening steel feathers, while the soldiers did their best to ignore him.

His eyes met Alex’s, and he smiled. “No, thank you. I don’t care for going underground.”

“We won’t be long,” Maura assured the creature. “I’d like to be home before dark.”

“Good,” said the Stormwing, gazing up at the pale sky. “I don’t think this nice weather will hold for much longer.”

Inside the mine, it was cold and damp, with an icy wind that rose up from deeper within the earth, carrying with it the scent of stone. Crystal mage-lamps were mounted along the walls of the tunnel, but the spells that lit them didn’t do much to dispel the gloom. A line of carts stood just inside the entrance, empty but for a scattering of dirt and gravel. “Spelled to repel rust,” said Finnian helpfully, when Alex walked over to examine them.

Maura lifted an unlit torch from a bracket on the wall and snapped her fingers over it. The end of the torch burst into flame. “This way, please,” she said, leading them into the tunnel. Her face was pale in the torchlight, her jaw set.

The stone floor sloped downward into darkness. They walked for several minutes, occasionally passing other tunnels that branched away from the main one, their entrances deep in shadow. From somewhere beyond them came the slow, steady sound of water dripping. Finally Maura turned to the right, leading them into a wide, frigid stone chamber.

Along the walls stood other carts, evidence of the miners who labored here in warmer weather. The lady stepped closer to the rock wall, beckoning for them to follow. In the flickering torchlight, veins of shifting color sparkled amidst the gray stone, flashing now blue, now red, green, gold, purple. When Maura lifted her torch, they saw pockets of color further up the walls, ascending into shadow.

“Beautiful,” murmured Lerant, his teeth chattering all the while.

Alex stood there for a moment in silence, gazing thoughtfully around him. People had committed treason for rocks like these; people had died for them. He shook his head. Sometimes it was very hard to understand people. “I take it there are several other rooms like this one.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Maura. “And more chambers that we’ve yet to start mining.”

“I won’t need to see them, then. Thank you,” he added, and she smiled at him, looking relieved.

By the time they emerged from the mine, it had begun to rain lightly. Previously a uniform pale gray, the sky was beginning to darken now over the western mountains. The rain continued to fall as they rode south along the lakeshore road, turning some of the packed-down snow and icy mud under their mounts’ hooves to slush. It ceased before they reached the village, but the heavy clouds remained in the eastern sky, promising more rain and sleet in the near future, if not more snow.

When Alex woke around dawn, the sky was still overcast, but the rain hadn’t returned and it wasn’t yet cold enough for snow. Coming to a decision, he roused Lerant and began packing. A good deal of the snow that had marked their arrival had cleared; with any luck, they would be able to leave the valley by way of the southern pass.

“Have you a weather mage here?” he asked Maura over breakfast.

She shook her head. “I’m afraid not, my lord.”

He nodded. It would have been better if they’d had one, but it wasn’t necessary. He could read the weather as well as any knight, and he was fairly certain that if they didn’t leave soon, another series of storms would trap them at Dunlath for the rest of the winter. “We’d best leave this morning, while the weather’s still clear,” he told her. “We thank you for your hospitality.”

She frowned. “It was no trouble, my lord. Are you sure you want to leave now?”

Alex nodded again, his attention on his breakfast. “It’s going to be a long winter, I think, and we’re expected at Fort Moraine by the end of November.”

The temperature began to drop as they rode south along the lakeshore. “Lady Maura said that if we’d stayed longer, the lake would have iced over enough for skating,” said Lerant at one point, huddled miserably under the fur-lined cloak he wore over his mail.

“We rode north so you could learn how to fight, not ice skate,” said Alex, frowning up at the sky. He didn’t like the look of those clouds now. The southern pass was still open, according to Lady Maura and her men-at-arms, but a bad storm would soon close it. It was possible he had misjudged the weather in his haste to get away from Dunlath Castle.

After about an hour of riding, snow began to drift down. Alex drew his cloak more tightly around himself, trying to ignore the bitter chill. They kept to the middle of the road, where the footing was surer. There were few travelers about, especially as the wind picked up and the snow began to fall heavier and faster, and Alex was glad for the relative solitude. It allowed him to keep his attention on the trees, which he scanned for signs of bandits or wolves, and on the packed earth underfoot, which he scanned for ice and gravel. It would be a bad thing for one of the horses to stumble, and their visibility was growing worse by the minute.

“I can’t feel my toes anymore,” Lerant complained, breaking a long silence.

Alex sighed. “What would your uncle the king say, if he heard you whining like that?”

Lerant opened his mouth to reply, but Alex held up a hand to silence him. His riding mount’s steps had slowed, Halberd’s muscles tensing between his knees. On the lead rein, his destrier War Hammer snorted and danced, as though she were about to plunge into battle. Alex glanced around, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

Just ahead, through the haze of swirling white, a dark shape separated from the trees along the side of the road. Another dark shape followed it, and then another, and another. From the size of them and the way the horses were behaving, it was clear they were not hounds. “String your bow,” Alex murmured, drawing his sword.

Lerant’s eyes were wide. “Maura said it’s against the law to hunt wolves at Dunlath.”

Henrim had complained about that over dinner one night. “It isn’t hunting if they attack you first,” Alex replied, his attention on the wolves. They had formed a line across the road, barring the way to the southern pass. If he judged the distance he and Lerant had traveled correctly, they were at most about a mile from the fort, nearly free of Fief Dunlath.

He glanced at Lerant, and saw with relief that the lad had strung his longbow and put an arrow to the string. Lerant was a good shot, and a solid fighter when he stopped arguing and did what he was told. “Get behind me,” said Alex, unfastening War Hammer from her lead rein and motioning for Lerant to do the same with his destrier. The warhorses would be as good in a fight as two other mounted knights. He was not about to let his squire be eaten by wolves.

Lerant obeyed, and then glanced over his shoulder. “Sir? They’re behind us, too.”

Alex cursed under his breath. “Turn your mount so your back is to mine, then. Pick your targets and loose at will, but be ready to draw your sword.”

There came the sound of wings, loud enough to be heard over the howling wind. For a moment the sky flashed dark, as hundreds of birds — carrion birds, wood pigeons, sparrows — exploded from the forest, circled as one overhead, and then descended upon him.

The horses panicked, their screams echoing in his ears as he fought to control Halberd. Wings buffeted his helm and shoulders; beaks and talons tore at his cloak and face. As he lowered his visor and raised his sword to keep them at bay, he felt Halberd rear, and then he was falling. He tumbled through the swirling darkness, landing with a clatter of armor in the road.

Alex scrambled to his feet, hearing another clatter as Lerant fell from his saddle. Ignoring the birds, he dove for the reins before Lerant’s mare trampled him.

Black wings, beating him upside the head. Lerant was on his feet now, trying to calm the horses. Alex dodged War Hammer’s hooves, heard wolves snarling as he lunged for her lead rein. In his peripheral vision, he saw Lerant shielding his eyes from a group of wood pigeons.

Abruptly, the birds turned and flew away, to land in the trees all around them. Alex stared up at them warily, as a raven lighted on a bare, icy branch extending over the road just ahead of him. It voiced a hoarse cry, breaking the sudden stillness.

One of its bright, cold eyes focused on him. Through the heavy snowfall, he saw the raven begin to change. Raising his sword, Alex watched in mute horror as its beak shrank and twisted.

“Sir?” said Lerant, from behind him. “The wolves are coming closer.”

Alex couldn’t take his eyes off the raven. Distantly, he could feel himself shivering, his teeth chattering. He couldn’t feel the cold anymore.

“Go,” it whispered, with its nightmarish mouth. It spoke in a raspy voice, a voice somewhere between human and raven. “Leave this place and never return.”

There was something familiar about that voice, he realized. He had heard it in the castle; he had heard it somewhere before that.

“ _Gods_ ,” said Lerant, who had turned and seen the raven.

The palace mice had destroyed his things deliberately. They had targeted him and Roger; they had chewed up tax records, of all things. There was a human intelligence behind that. “Keep your eyes on the wolves,” said Alex.

He gathered his courage and stepped forward, gazing calmly up at the witch. Against his better judgment, he raised his visor so she could see his face. “You may not want to hear it from me, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what I did in Carthak. If I could bring him back, I would.”

The raven glared down at him. “ _Go_. This is a cursed place. Tell your king to withdraw his armies from it, and send his prisoners somewhere else.”

“All I want right now is to leave this valley,” he said. “Believe me, I have no desire to return. But what the king does here — I don’t have any control over him. Do you think I would have spent months on the road with you if I’d had a choice?”

He heard a snarl to his left, and looked away from her. One of the wolves had begun to slink toward him, its teeth bared. Alex fell into guard position, waiting.

“I could haunt you and your king for the rest of your lives,” came that hoarse whisper again. “If I wanted to.”

He glanced up at her again, taking his eyes off the wolf for just an instant. “You’re one girl,” he pointed out, “against a king and his armies. Do you really think you’d win? What do you think Roger will do to Lady Maura, when his nephew and I disappear on Dunlath land?”

She was silent, watching him with yellow eyes.

“She’s just a child,” he went on. “Would you really rain trouble down on her, for the sake of revenge? I’m _sorry_ for what I did to Numair.”

“I’m not the one who forced her to keep the mine open,” she replied.

“Do you think I _care_ about that blasted mine? Look, I’ll tell him to stop. Would that make you happy? I can tell you now, he won’t listen to me. But I’ll tell him, and for Maura’s sake, I won’t hunt you down.”

The wolf stopped just out of range of his sword. For a moment there was silence again, save for the wind. Then the raven said, “If either of you hurt Maura, I’ll make you regret the day you ever laid eyes on Fief Dunlath. Now go.”

Alex watched as the line of wolves blocking the way to the southern fort parted, giving them room to continue on. His heart still pounding, he swung up into the saddle again, stroking Halberd’s neck to calm him. Lerant passed him War Hammer’s lead rein before mounting up again. Alex kept his sword in hand, guiding Halberd forward with his knees and two clicks of his tongue. “Are you all right?” he asked, glancing at his squire.

“What was _that_?” asked Lerant in a low voice, nervously watching the wolves as they rode on.

“I’ll explain later. If I can.”

The wolves did not venture closer, and a glance over his shoulder once they were clear of the pack told Alex that they had not followed them. They watched from the sides of the road, until they were again only shadows behind the swirling snow, and then they melted into the trees and were gone. The Wildmage had vanished.

Maura of Dunlath sat beside the fireplace in her sitting room, reading. With her attention on the book in her lap, it seemed to take a moment before she noticed movement in the shadowy corner of the room. That was just as well. Daine was nearly finished changing back to human when the younger girl looked up, her eyes widening. Then she frowned, and her eyes narrowed.

“There’s a dressing gown over there you can wear,” she said, returning her attention to her book. “I hope you haven’t done anything that’s going to get back to the king.”

Daine gazed down at her for a moment, feeling more disappointed than surprised, before crossing to the chair with the dressing gown draped over it. She put it on, pushed her hair back from her face, and then sat down. From this angle, with the play of firelight over Maura’s face, it was easier to read the other girl’s expressions. “Yesterday we agreed that it would be better if the king left Dunlath alone,” she pointed out.

Maura looked up again, her eyes flashing. In them, Daine saw more fear than anger. “We were speaking _hypothetically_. He’s not likely to give up a fortune in black opals, and after what Yolane did, I would be a fool to draw his attention. I told you not to antagonize Lord Alexander.”

“I just spooked him a little,” Daine retorted.

Maura sighed. “It’s different for you, because you’re common-born and not Tortallan, but I can’t do _anything_ that hints at treason. The king watches us too closely. I was lucky to escape Yolane’s fate.”

Daine sat there in silence for a moment, grinding her teeth. She knew the ways of the world, but sometimes it was still hard to believe that it meant nothing, to those Stormwings in Corus, that Maura had risked her life saving the kingdom from disaster.

“How’s Master Numair?” asked Maura, with a knowing look in her eyes that Daine didn’t like. When Lord Alexander had turned up out of nowhere, Daine had felt better telling herself that what she planned was more about protecting Fief Dunlath and her friends there, and less about personal revenge, but Maura had immediately seen through that pretense.

She had wanted to destroy the palace. She’d daydreamed about it during her flight to Corus, about tearing it down brick by brick and burying King Roger alive in the rubble. But when she came within sight of the palace walls, she realized that wasn’t what she wanted after all.

There were other people living in that heap of stone and glass, people she had gotten to know and like during her unwanted year in Tortall. Sacherell of Wellam was there, and so were Prince Jonathan and his younger brothers, and Duke Gareth and his son, who had both been kind to her in Carthak. Not to mention all of the horses in the stables, the palace mice and cats, the hounds and the hawks nobles kept. She had gotten to know them all, and she couldn’t destroy their home.

And, of course, there were the hundreds of miles she had flown over by that point, the sheer size of Roger’s realm, and the size of his armies. They would be on her before she made it off the palace grounds. She might have escaped in hawk form, if one of the archers didn’t shoot her down over Corus, but Cloud and the horses would slow her down. And she would get them killed, for no better reason than vengeance for Numair, when Numair had survived the king’s attempt to have him killed.

She just wanted to be free of Roger, really, and she wanted him to forget about the opals at Fief Dunlath. Thinking that over, she had lighted on a branch just inside the palace walls, watching the hostlers come and go as she considered her options. Who ran a kingdom, really? Its tax collectors, that was who.

She watched Maura in the firelight now, satisfied that at least she’d done that: she had distracted Roger for a little while, by destroying his records and accounts. It would take him years to rebuild all of what he’d lost, and perhaps that would give Maura a few years of relative freedom while she learned how to manage Dunlath.

“Numair’s well enough,” she replied carefully. She had asked him whether he wanted to come with her, but he had elected to stay behind in Tyra with his books, and with the friends they’d made there over the past year. And after all, he’d told her, someone had to look after Zek; the marmoset had not wished to experience snow for the first time, not after Daine had described it to him. “I don’t think he ever meant to return to Tyra, but he’s much happier there than he was in Corus.”

“I believe you said he teaches magic?” said Maura, in the polite tones she used to converse with visiting nobility. Daine had heard her use that voice on Lord Alexander several times over the past week, when she had spied on them in the guise of a mouse.

It hurt, hearing Maura talk that way with her. “He does, and our landlady’s started asking him to strengthen the protective spells on the boardinghouse every few months. It costs her less for him to do it than an outside mage, and it keeps him busy.”

“And you’re working as a healer, aren’t you? Tell me about that.”

If Maura didn’t want to talk about the fate of Dunlath, Daine couldn’t make her. She settled back in her chair, and told Maura about some of the patients she’d had in the months before she’d left for Tortall. In the midst of an anecdote, she felt a sudden pang of guilt. How many animals in Tyra might have been injured in her absence?

“And you like the work?” asked Maura eagerly, and in that moment Daine’s heart broke for her, alone in her castle but for Lord Rikash and Tait the huntsman, and those awful men the king had sent to keep watch over her. She’d had to grow up very fast over the past few years, but she was still only twelve.

“I do,” said Daine. It was such a relief to finally be free of court politics, and be able to focus on helping others, especially now that they had managed to save a little money and weren’t so preoccupied with worrying where their next meal was going to come from. And she had Numair’s company, and the friends she’d made in Tyra. “I’m much happier there than in Corus, too.”

“Good,” said Maura, looking a little wistful in the firelight. “I am grateful, you know, for your company — and for your help in talking to the wolves. They can’t understand me or Rikash as well as they understand you, and I know it’s upset them to see the mining continue.”

Daine nodded, understanding what she’d left unsaid. “But I should return to Tyra now.”

“I meant it,” said Maura, catching her gaze and holding it, “when I said I can’t afford to do anything that hints at treason. Having you here is far too close to that — I think Finnian may be starting to suspect there’s someone hidden away in the castle. If the southern pass is still open tomorrow, you should take the horses and go.” She smiled slightly, trying to soften her words. “It’s late. We should both get some rest.”

Daine knew she was right, but her words stung a little anyway. She had only been trying to help. “I’ll write,” she promised Maura, though she had never been much of a letter writer. She did her best to write regularly to Sir Myles; she’d have to make an effort to do the same with Maura — or else lose her friendship, and she didn’t want that.

Maura got to her feet, leaving her book on the chair beside the hearth. She hadn’t been able to manage a smile for very long. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

That wouldn’t do. “I know,” said Daine, getting up and holding her arms out to her. When Maura stepped closer, Daine hugged her tightly to her chest, glad when Maura relaxed against her. “I’m sorry, too. But that’s just how things are, for now at least. Who’s to say things won’t change, though?”

“I hope they do,” said Maura, with a sigh.

It was nearly Midwinter by the time Alanna received another letter from Thom, and in the foothills of the Roof of the World, on the opposite side of the city, it was snowing. When he appeared in the morning light, his hair dusted with snow, the message rider had a second letter with him. It turned out to be from Thayet’s cousin in Yamut.

“I kept meaning to write to her,” said Thayet, as she sat down at the kitchen table and began to read. “And for weeks, it kept slipping my mind. Oh, look at that — Lady Kethia’s husband is the governor of Yamut now.”

“Is he?” said Alanna absently from across the table, her eyes on Thom’s letter.

Thayet took a sip of her tea. “She’s glad to hear I survived the war. Gods, I should have written to her _years_ ago. What’s wrong with me?”

“You said you’d never been all that close,” Alanna pointed out.

Thayet smiled. “Listen to you, trying to excuse my conduct. What does Thom say?”

She skimmed the rest of the letter quickly, before returning to the paragraph she’d been reading. “Her name is Keladry of Mindelan. Apparently she’s still at the palace. So is Eda Bell.”

“Eda!” said Thayet, looking up at her in surprise. “I didn’t know she’d gone back to Tortall.”

“He only mentions her in passing. She and another Shang warrior are helping to train the pages.” Alanna smiled as she reread that sentence, feeling relieved. “I suppose Keladry isn’t entirely alone after all. She isn’t in Thom’s class — no Gift. Most of what he knows about her comes from his manservant, who’s befriended one of the servants who works in the pages’ wing.”

“Mindelan,” said Thayet absently, taking another sip of her tea. “Do you know the family?”

Alanna shook her head. “Their fief is near Trebond, but we didn’t really know anyone growing up. My father was too much of a recluse. They’re diplomats, Thom says — apparently the baron was the ambassador to the Yamani Islands. Keladry grew up there.”

Thayet looked up again, raising an eyebrow. “ _That’s_ interesting. The Yamani Islands were all but isolated until recently. They certainly wouldn’t trade with my father.”

“Apparently her family managed to secure a treaty with Tortall.”

“That takes skill. Of course, I’m sure they got there at just the right time — I remember hearing something about a growing faction of reformers among the Yamani nobility, not long before I left court. They must have gained more power over the years.”

“Apparently Roger’s oldest son is betrothed to a Yamani princess now. Poor girl.”

“Mm,” said Thayet, looking distracted by something. She frowned at the letter from her cousin, her brow furrowing.

“What is it?”

“Kethia’s invited us to visit her in Yamut.”

Alanna reached for her own forgotten cup of tea, thinking that over. It had gone cold. She warmed it again with her magic, remembering her meeting with the Goddess half a year ago. Put aside your dislike of sea voyages, at least for a short time, the Goddess had said, just before vanishing. Thayet had told her later that evening that the shortest voyage by sea from Bajrapur would take them to Yamut. “When?” she asked.

“Whenever we like.” Thayet frowned, looking troubled. “It’s not a quick journey, really. There’s the boat down the river, and then the sea voyage and the trip overland to the capital. It would take us at least a week to reach the governor’s residence, in good weather.”

“We’d have to find someone to take over the school while we were gone,” said Alanna, still thinking of her conversation with the Goddess. Tortall will likely rip herself apart soon, she had said, in that voice like a tempest. Alanna shivered.

“We’d have to prepare to be gone for a long time,” Thayet agreed, “just in case. You’re thinking about the Goddess, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “It seems a little uncanny.”

“Well, we don’t have to make a decision right away. It’s the wrong time of year for traveling.” She gazed thoughtfully toward the kitchen hearth, where a cauldron of soup simmered over a low fire. “Who would you put in charge, if we did choose to leave for a while?”

Alanna thought for a moment. “Onua. She has sense, and she’s comfortable making decisions.”

“And she’s been with us for long enough to know what she’s doing. You’re right, she’s probably the best choice.” Thayet sighed, smiling wearily. “And here I thought I was free from court nonsense forever. I have nothing to wear, you know, to meet the governor of Yamut.”

“That’s all right,” said Alanna, shrugging. “Neither do I. We’ll just turn up in rags.”

Thayet laughed. “Don’t tempt me. Well, never mind that now,” she said, setting the letter down on the table. “We should get moving. I have a history class to teach in half an hour, and I’m still wearing my dressing gown.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from something Maura says in the epilogue of _Wolf-Speaker_ , when she's trying to sell Daine on the concept of winter and Daine's not having it.


	14. The Knife

**453 H.E.**

Not long after she returned to Tyra, Daine’s friend Leyla Jupp invited her to a coffeehouse in the heart of the city, to meet the boy she hoped to make king.

“I’m doing this mainly for the coffee,” Daine warned her, as they set out from the boardinghouse. The drink was starting to grow on her, though she had hated it the first time she’d tried it, shortly before she and Numair had left Carthak.

“Oh, I know about your aversion to politics,” replied Leyla. “I only want to see what you think of him as a person.”

The street was blanketed in a dense fog that muffled speech, and hid the canal that ran alongside it. Numair had warned Daine that winter and early spring in Tyra meant constant rain and fog, and he hadn’t lied. The damp found its way under her cloak and tunic as they walked along, making her shiver despite the fact that it wasn’t particularly cold out.

Regardless of the weather, Kouray of Queen’s Harbor was in town for the next two months, staying at the house of one of his former tutors. Why he had chosen to visit Tyra in the rainy season Daine couldn’t imagine, but she had to admit she was curious about him, and curious about why Leyla had thrown her hopes of revolution behind him.

When they entered the coffeehouse, Daine saw him sitting near the back of a crowded, dimly lit room, surrounded by students and listening intently to what one of them was saying. He looked to be about her age, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, a lean young man with dark hair tied back in a horsetail and skin a shade or two darker than Daine’s. Her initial impression of him was one of quiet serenity, and she didn’t trust it, remembering silent, brooding Alexander of Tirragen.

Leyla led her through the clamor, and his dark eyes lit up with interest as they approached. Daine held her tongue, watching the nobleman as her friend introduced them both, and trying to keep her expression neutral when she heard herself referred to as Denya Silverwing, the local animal healer. It had been such a relief to hear Maura calling her by her real name, instead of the alias she had adopted to evade King Roger’s spies.

“Have a seat,” Kouray suggested. “We were discussing King Barnesh’s new tax on spices. Would you like some coffee?”

Daine listened as they talked, the conversation carried now by Leyla and the students, most of them from Tyran temple schools and a few others home for a visit from the Carthaki University just across the sea. One or two of them were from Maren, like Kouray. She learned their names in a dizzying circle of introductions, and forgot most of them immediately.

King Barnesh, she soon learned, was trying to break the backs of the nobility in Maren. Hearing at one point how he had just passed a law forbidding his nobles from maintaining a force of more than a hundred fighting men at their fiefs, she raised her eyebrows. Kouray caught her eye, raising his brows in kind and smiling slightly.

“He fears rebellion,” he said. “The civil war in Sarain spooked him, I think.”

“But that was years ago,” she said.

“A decade isn’t a very long time,” he pointed out.

Considering that Leyla was planning a rebellion over a war that was now eighty years old, she had to admit he was right about that. “What about the rebellions in Carthak? Could that be what he’s thinking of?”

Kouray nodded, looking thoughtful. “That’s probably a factor, yes. Kaddar’s had a rough time since the regime change there.”

“A rough time fighting people who just want control over their own lands?” said one of the students, whose name Daine had forgotten.

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” said Kouray. “I’d love to see the empire break apart. But his nobility would eat him alive, and he _is_ trying to pass reforms.”

“Maybe they should,” said someone else.

He frowned slightly. “Maybe, but at this point he doesn’t have an heir. How many innocent people would die, while his distant relatives fought each other for the throne?”

“You’re forgetting how revolutions work, Ilan,” put in another student. “It’s the ruthless who rise out of the ashes, not the reformers. Whoever came to power in Carthak would likely be far worse than Kaddar.”

“Kaddar can’t even manage to free the slaves,” Ilan retorted.

They jumped from one argument to another, and as the conversation wore on, Daine found that she liked the fact that Kouray seemed to weigh everyone else’s opinions in his mind before offering up any of his own. He showed interest in Leyla’s work as well, when she mentioned one of the pamphlets she’d printed. “You’re a printer, then?” he asked her, looking fascinated. “I’d like to see your shop sometime, if you’re willing. I’ve always wanted to see how exactly books were printed.”

Daine watched them, feeling uneasy. She couldn’t help but recall the day King Roger had asked her about the wolves of Dunlath, and listened to her answers with keen interest. Another day, not long before she’d left for Carthak, she had visited the renovated menagerie in Corus and found Roger standing before the wolf enclosure, smiling fondly as he watched the pups wrestle. She wasn’t eager to be fooled by another tyrant.

An hour later, she followed Leyla back out into the fog. In the street, she drew her cloak more tightly around herself, trying to keep out the damp chill as she considered the young man she had just met. She hadn’t wanted to like Kouray, though she hadn’t really wanted to dislike him either. A small part of her had been hoping, up until now, that he might quietly die in a riding accident somewhere in Maren and she could forget about him.

“You’re going to fight for him,” she said softly, “and you’re probably going to die.”

Leyla met her gaze evenly. “At least I’d die doing what was right, then.”

“Helping a boy become king?” she said, feeling suddenly angry.

“Hush,” said Leyla, her dark eyes blazing. “Not here, out in the street.”

Daine lowered her voice. “What’s right, exactly, about what you’re trying to do here?”

“Do you know what Jasson the Conqueror’s army _did_ to Barzun?” Leyla hissed, her eyes fixed on Daine’s. “My mother’s grandda — his entire family died when the army marched through his village. They razed it to the _ground_. He only survived because he was off searching for a lost goat.”

She took a deep breath. “A king doesn’t just peacefully give up a whole country, Denya. King Erhen didn’t. When Jasson tried to take Barzun for his descendants, saying it was theirs by right because Queen Daneline was distantly related to the royal family, Erhen sent his armies to defend the border. They lost.”

“I’m sorry,” Daine whispered.

“I _know_ the king of Tortall isn’t simply going to give up a third of his country. There’s going to be a fight. I know that. But he has no right to it. Jasson had no right to invade us, none at all.”

Daine nodded, still feeling vaguely sick. She thought of the map of Tortall pinned to the wall in Sir Myles’s office, the sheer size of its borders, and remembered the King’s Own marching her south to Corus. The young man she’d met in the coffeehouse would be helpless against them.

“Kouray has allies, you know,” said Leyla, sounding calmer now. “His mother’s arranged a betrothal for him to Princess Liliane of Galla. And he’s friendly with the Voice of the Tribes, who leads the Bazhir in Tortall.”

Daine stared at her. “He’s betrothed to a Gallan princess? How did his ma manage _that_?”

“Well, his father’s very rich,” she replied, and Daine wondered whether he was rich enough to fund an army. Not if King Barnesh had anything to say about it, she thought. “And King Matrurin hates Roger of Tortall, or so I hear. Apparently Roger lured a powerful mage away from the Gallan court a few years ago, and Matrurin’s never forgiven him for it.”

It was chilling to hear herself being described in passing like this, as the pawn of kings. “That’s subtle,” said Daine, “marrying your daughter off to someone who has a claim to the country your enemy’s ancestor conquered.”

Leyla smiled slowly. “It is. But sooner or later, Roger’s going to notice.”

It began to rain again, a slow drizzle that misted their hair and clothes. “It’s getting late,” she said, grimacing slightly. “We should head home.”

Daine followed her down the street, toward the bridge that would lead them back to Mistress Zaman’s boardinghouse. “I liked him,” she confessed, as the bridge revealed itself to them through the fog. “Kouray, I mean.”

Leyla glanced at her. “He is nice, isn’t he? I hadn’t met him before, only heard things from people who had.”

“I won’t risk my life for him,” said Daine. “But I think I’m starting to understand why you would.”

“I wouldn’t ask you for anything more,” said Leyla, and they walked on together in silence, across the bridge and home again.

A week of heavy rains had turned the Great Road North into a ribbon of mud, putting them two days behind schedule and sending Lerant to bed early, when they finally reached the inn, with a summer cold.

Alex had been so eager for a bath that he was halfway through washing the mud out of his hair before he realized that they had stopped less than an hour south of Trebond Way. If Lerant noticed that his knight-master was unusually quiet, as they sat in the common room waiting for a healer to arrive, he didn’t say anything about it. They ate their supper in silence, punctuated by occasional bouts of coughing from Lerant.

After the healer had arrived and Lerant had gone to bed, Alex ordered another tankard of ale and told the innkeeper that he wanted to be left alone. Tomorrow they would turn down Trebond Way, and ride past the point where bandits had once ambushed him and Jon, nearly sixteen years ago now. He wondered whether it would be raining when they passed it. He wondered whether he would even recognize it, after so many years.

He didn’t like remembering his last ride with Jon. It had begun on a rainy night in October, when he had awoken suddenly around midnight and known, somehow, that Jon was gone.

He’d dressed hurriedly and roused his squire, telling Geoffrey that he needed to leave the palace for a few weeks, and that Geoffrey was to remain behind and report to Roger, who had offered to look after him in Alex’s absence. His saddlebags were already packed, just in case, which saved him enough time to saddle his horse and surprise Jon in the stable, just before the prince could ride away.

“Oh, it’s you,” Jon had said, and Alex could still recall the look on his face: the flash of shock, followed by disdain and muted anger. “I suppose you’ve come to stop me.” He was dressed for stealth, in dark colors and a long cloak, and he’d tied strips of cloth around his horse’s tack to muffle it.

“No,” said Alex. “I’ve come to help you.”

Jon studied his face in the dim light, frowning. “Why?”

Alex was silent for a moment. Why indeed? Because Roger had asked him to, really. “Because Alanna was the best swordsman in her year,” he said at last, and it didn’t feel like a lie. “And she was my friend.”

Jon’s expression hadn’t changed. “It didn’t bother you, when you found out she was a girl?”

Alex shrugged. “Skill is skill. So, what’s your plan? To ride hundreds of miles north on your own, in the middle of autumn? It’s going to snow by the time you reach Trebond, assuming you aren’t killed by bandits or wolves along the way.”

“Stupid plan, really,” said Jon, as he swung into the saddle. “Goodbye.”

Alex followed him. “What are you going to do when you get to Trebond?” he asked, as they rode out into the driving rain. “What’s your plan there, exactly?”

“Go home, Alex.”

“No.”

Jon wheeled around, his face pale in the darkness. “Do you know _why_ she left? Did Roger tell you? I had to hear it from my _parents_ , when they explained to me how my squire had perverted the natural order of things. My mother wanted to call in a priestess to lecture at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I should have been there for her. Instead I was in the training yards, hitting somebody with a stick. Gods, I’m an idiot.”

The guards at the western gate waved them through without incident after Alex called up to them, identifying himself as Lord Tirragen. “I was sorry to hear about your father,” said Jon quietly, after they were outside the gate. “You never told us he’d died.”

“I didn’t like talking about it.”

Jon glanced at him. “You talked about it with Roger. He’s the one who mentioned it to me.”

Alex met his eyes, not sure how to reply to that. He often felt that there was a wall between what he really meant and what he ended up saying, when he managed to find the words to speak at all. “He’s easy to talk to,” he said finally, but those were the wrong words: the truth was that Roger had always been able to see through the wall somehow, straight into his heart.

“You stopped talking to us at some point,” said Jon, as they rode north along the edge of the city.

Alex could see a scattering of lights down there, marking the windows and doorways of taverns and eating-houses. “It was mutual, wasn’t it? You all started avoiding me. Going to some tavern in the Lower City together without me.”

“I didn’t realize you knew about that,” said Jon, and he had the grace to sound vaguely ashamed. “We weren’t trying to exclude you, exactly.”

Alex fought to keep his eyes on the road ahead, and the anger out of his voice. “What was it, then? You didn’t think I’d be interested? What were you even doing in the Lower City, visiting — loose women?”

Jon glanced at him again. “Loose women?” he repeated, sounding as though he were trying not to laugh. “We were visiting a friend. I don’t think Alanna would have been all that interested in loose women.”

Alex glowered back at him.

“I’m sorry, you just sounded so prim. Haven’t you ever . . . Never mind.”

“Haven’t I ever _what_?”

“You know, traditionally squires are notorious for trying to get under the skirts of the maidservants,” Jon remarked, his voice thoughtful now. “I don’t think I ever saw you even _look_ at a maidservant while you were a squire.”

“What’s your point?”

Jon shrugged, making the mail shirt he wore under his dark cloak jingle softly. “You were always so driven. I guess we just thought you were too busy to want to join us.”

“You could have asked me.”

“You’re right,” said Jon. “We should have asked you. Maybe after we get back to Corus . . . His name is George Cooper.”

Alex glanced at him, somewhat mollified. “Your friend in the city?”

“Yes,” said Jon, and as they’d ridden away from the palace, under the cover of darkness, he had told Alex all about George Cooper, the king of the thieves. Sometimes Alex still wished he’d gotten the chance to meet him.

He had never strung his bow the day Jon had died. The first wave of bandits had ridden up on them suddenly, leaving him just enough time to draw his sword. Later, after the fight was over, he had seen his longbow still strapped to his saddle, and the quiver of unspent arrows beside it. At least he remembered that part clearly, which meant that he couldn’t have loosed the arrow that had buried itself in Jon’s chest, puncturing a lung. But had he seen the archer take aim and knowingly stood aside? He couldn’t remember. He remembered waking up in the dirt to the sound of Jon’s ragged breathing, but everything before that moment was faded and fragmented.

The innkeeper had been very obliging, so there was no reason for anyone to be approaching his table now. Nonetheless, someone was. Alex could see him approaching out of the corner of his eye, his objective clear and true. He took another sip of ale, trying to ignore him. The man seemed vaguely familiar, in the way he moved and in his general shape, which boded ill.

A hand clapped him on the back. “Alex! Didn’t expect to see you here.”

It was Geoffrey of Meron, the first squire he’d ever had. Alex gazed up at him, trying not to look sullen, and trying not to recall how Geoffrey had watched him, quietly and suspiciously, after he had returned to Corus with Jon’s body. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Fief Trebond’s been having a problem with hurroks. That’s not where you’re headed, is it?”

Alex shook his head. “Scanran raiders near Fief Torhelm. We were going to cut across Trebond land to save time, though.”

“They’re taking advantage of our little problem with the immortals. Almost makes you wonder if they’re having the same problem up in Scanra.” He sat down across from Alex and signaled to the innkeeper. “A cup of ale for me, and another one for my friend here. And food, if you please — whatever you’ve got that’s hot and filling.”

Alex shut his eyes for a moment, resigning himself to company for the evening. Part of him was actually relieved. He had no desire to keep reliving the day Jon had died, or any part of the ride leading up to it. Better to leave the past where it lay.

“Where’s your squire?” asked Geoffrey, as the innkeeper hurried to bring them two cups of ale and another bowl of same venison stew Alex and Lerant had eaten without much enjoyment. “You didn’t leave him at the last inn, did you?”

Alex jerked his head toward the stairs. “Went to bed early. He caught a cold.”

Geoffrey took a long drink of ale. “That’s what comes of sleeping out in the rain, I suppose. So, how have you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Fine,” said Alex, with a shrug. “Border duty, you know.”

“I just finished cleaning out a spidren nest with a few squads of the King’s Own myself. I have to say, I think I prefer hurroks — but not by much.”

“Hate spidrens,” Alex agreed.

Geoffrey nodded. “A group of pages helped us sort that mess out. Pages! I can’t even _imagine_ Duke Gareth letting us fight spidrens when we were pages and squires. Can you?”

“There weren’t any spidrens when we were pages.”

“True, but if there had been.” He took another drink of his ale. “I met the girl page. She led us right to them.”

“What?”

His face lit up. “She had these little birds that acted as scouts. They led us right to the spidrens. You should have seen it, Alex, it was amazing.”

He shuddered, remembering the Wildmage and her screeching clouds of birds, and his week in the aviary in Carthak. “Hate birds,” he mumbled into his cup.

“Who pissed in your ale?”

“I’m terrible company tonight, aren’t I? Always have been, I suppose.”

Geoffrey clapped him on the shoulder, smiling wryly. “It’s a wonder I didn’t suffocate you in your sleep while I was still a squire. Anyway, I imagine the birds are a lingering effect of having Lady Veralidaine the Wildmage living in Corus for a year, a couple years back.”

“She wasn’t a lady when I first met her, just some Gallan hedgewitch’s bastard.”

Geoffrey ignored him. “I talked to Stefan Groomsman about this once. He has a little horse magic himself, you know. He said the palace animals are a bit different now. Smarter, in a human sort of way. And Page Keladry told me that she’s been feeding those birds since she got to Corus, so I guess they bonded with her.”

Alex was silent for a moment, thinking that over. “What’s her name?”

“Keladry of Mindelan.”

He grunted. Frilly sort of name. He had seen the girl once or twice in the training yards, back in autumn. From what he remembered, the name didn’t suit her. “She fight?”

“What?”

“Did she fight the spidrens?”

“She’s a first-year page, Alex. She was in a line of sentries with torches.” Geoffrey thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, though, I remember one of the King’s Own lads saying she killed one with a spear when it tried to break through the line. They’re braver than we were as pages, I think.”

Alex nodded, satisfied. They would have to be brave, in this day and age. “Good. Skill is skill, after all.”

Geoffrey was blessedly silent for a few minutes, sipping his ale and staring into the shadows gathering in the corners of the room. “Wonder what she’s doing right now.”

“Who, Keladry of Mindelan? Probably waiting at table. Bringing roast boar to that block of wood that replaced His Grace.”

Geoffrey raised an eyebrow, as though to say Alex wasn’t fooling him. “Not her. Alan. Alanna, I mean.”

The common room wasn’t crowded, so in the brief pause that followed, Alex could hear the pattering of rain on the roof. Dusk had fallen early that day, hours before they’d even reached the inn. “Probably sleeping,” he said, “if she has any sense at all. Listen, I’m going to turn in. I’ll see you in the morning.”

As she turned to ride back for another pass at the quintain, Kel saw that she was no longer alone in the tilting yard. A man sat on the fence, watching her with interest. Beside him stood a liver chestnut destrier, saddled for tilting and waiting patiently inside the yard.

She approached the man, dismounting before Peachblossom was within biting range. “Sorry, sir, did you want a turn at this quintain?”

At first glance he had seemed familiar, but as she got closer she decided that was only because he looked a bit like her friend Seaver, with his wind-tousled black hair and light brown skin. He held up a wooden ring. “I was going to use this, actually. I was just watching you.”

She bowed, indicating he could go ahead, and then leaned back against the fence to watch. He mounted gracefully and rode over to one of the tilting dummies she had never used, which was shaped crudely like a knight with very long arms. From the arms hung a long line of cords whipping in the breeze. When he began to tie his wooden ring to one of the cords, Kel saw what he meant to do. She had seen the squires tilting at rings, but never paid much attention to them when she had tasks of her own to focus on.

She didn’t think she would have approached that fluttering ring at a gallop, but he did, the practice lance light in his grip. The distant target was so small that she almost missed it when the lance hit home and the cord snapped.

He rode back to the fence at a trot, and Kel grinned at him. “That was wonderful, sir.”

One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I’m out of practice. I’ve been away from the palace since October. I meant to keep that ring on the lance, you see,” he explained, as he dismounted. “Gods only know where I sent it flying to. You’re one of the pages, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“With your aim, Wyldon should be starting you on rings within a year or so. It’s Keladry of Mindelan, isn’t it?”

She was starting to get used to being recognized by people she'd never laid eyes on before. “That’s right, sir.”

“Alex,” he said, sticking out his hand. As she shook it, Kel noted that his palm was callused, and that his dark clothes were plain but clearly well-made.

Alex indeed, she thought — Sir Alexander at least, if not Lord Alexander. But there were no identifying marks on his jerkin, shield, or saddle, so she let him keep his anonymity. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

Left to his own devices for a moment, Peachblossom had taken the opportunity to sidle closer to the man and his horse. His head snaked out before Kel could guide him away, teeth aimed for Alex’s hand. The man pulled his arm back just in time.

“Sorry, sir, sorry —”

“Not very friendly, is he?” Alex wasn’t smiling, but his dark eyes glittered with amusement. Kel, who had seen the same expression on the faces of countless Yamani warriors over the years, felt a sudden stab of homesickness.

“No, sir,” she agreed dryly. “He puts up with me and Stefan Groomsman, and that’s about it.”

He gazed admiringly at Peachblossom. “What a splendid warhorse. A little too big, maybe, but you’ll probably grow into him soon.” He turned his appraising eye on Kel. “You're only a first-year page, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “I’m going into my second year.”

“So they won’t have started making you wear those weighted vests yet. They didn’t have those when I was a page, you know. Wonderful idea Wyldon had there. Gets you used to wearing armor.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Well, you have another month, if you wanted to start early. Have you ever tried using weighted weapons?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, puzzled. It sounded like he was trying to help her, which didn’t make much sense. He wasn’t a relative; she didn’t even know who he was.

He smiled, looking pleasantly surprised. “Really? Good. Could I see your lance for a moment?”

She handed it to him warily, but he only held it, moved it up and down, and then balanced it briefly on his palm, before giving it back to her. “Not a bad weight. How long have you been training with this?”

“Since my first week on lance, sir. I had the rest of my practice weapons weighted after that — it was too strange going from a weighted lance to a sword that was so much lighter.”

He nodded approvingly. “Try increasing the weight a little bit, if you’re used to this one now.”

She blinked, feeling touched. It wasn’t every day that knights went out of their way to give her advice. “I will. Thank you, sir.”

Someone was approaching at a jog. When she turned, she saw one of the palace stableboys slowing to a walk to catch his breath. “My Lord Provost is looking for you, Lord Alexander.”

“Ah, thank you, Jem.” He turned back to Kel, smiling. “Well, I expect I’m about to be sent back to the Scanran border for a few months, but I’m sure I’ll see you again at some point. When you increase the weight, don’t get ambitious and overdo it.”

“Yes, sir.”

She watched him lead his horse away, the stableboy Jem coming to stand beside her. “I didn’t realize you knew the King’s Champion,” he said, awe in his voice.

For an instant she felt as though she were standing on the curtain wall, looking straight down. “He didn’t mention his title,” she said, when the feeling had passed. “He just said his name was Alex.”

“He’s not a bad sort, as nobles go,” remarked Jem. “Quiet, but not as haughty as some lords are. Takes good care of his horses. You really didn’t know who he was?”

She shook her head. “I’ve lived at court for less than a year now.”

“You should watch him fight, when you get the chance.” He glanced in the direction of the stables. “I should head back. There’s a company of the King’s Own that’s s’posed to be returning today.”

When he was gone, Kel tied Peachblossom’s reins loosely to the fence, in case someone else came into the yard, and then set off over the churned earth toward the tilting dummies. She recalled having seen Lord Alexander flick his lance upward after the cord snapped. The ring would have flown over his right shoulder, she thought, scanning the grass where she suspected it to have landed. After a few minutes of searching, she found it.

“Let’s try this out for a while,” she told her horse, as she returned to the fence with the ring in hand. She could give it to Stefan when she took Peachblossom back to his stall, to return to Lord Alexander before he left for the border.

Come September, Kel was glad she’d started wearing her weighted vest a month early. If she hadn’t, she expected she would have fallen asleep during the extra etiquette lessons Master Oakbridge had prescribed after their first, disastrous week of banquet service.

Most of her friends wanted to call Joren and his cronies out, especially Merric, who had nearly made it unscathed to the end of the banquet on their third night back before being tripped by Vinson and spilling hot gravy all over himself.

“We’re not brawling over this,” said Kel, propping her chin up on her fist so she wouldn’t fall asleep over her supper. “If we pick a fight, then we’re just as bad as them.”

“They started it,” pointed out Esmond of Nicoline, whose clothes were spattered with wine from a dropped jug. “Besides, I thought we were trying to put a stop to bullying.”

She opened her mouth to explain the difference, as she saw it, between starting a fight and helping someone who couldn’t defend himself against three older pages, when Jasson of Eldorne spoke up. “I think I’ve an idea,” he said, gently shaking his cousin awake.

Gavain of Conté lifted his head from his hands, and blinked wearily at Jasson.

“Hey, first-year,” said Jasson, “did you like having to serve the Carthaki ambassador tonight?”

Gavain shook his head, frowning slightly. “I’m not calling on royal privilege, if that’s what you want. Not when I’m brand new, and Joren and his friends are fourth-years.”

Jasson shrugged, as though he’d expected this response. “All right, then we’ll ask Jon. He loves calling on royal privilege. Though we’ll have to wait until after the dancing is over, I suppose.”

That would mean another night of trouble, thought Kel, gazing thoughtfully around the room. The crown prince was a squire now, so he would be in the ballroom until the nobility began to retire to their rooms, which could be well after Joren and the other pages went to bed. “You know, they gave up on hazing the first-years because there got to be too many of us to fight,” she pointed out. “We could do something like that to make them back off.”

“How?” said Merric.

“I bet we aren’t the only ones who aren’t looking forward to an extra hour of practicing bows and serving.”

The trouble with having an idea, Kel realized a little while later, as the last pages were finishing up their meal, was that everyone expected you to follow through with it. “You do it,” Neal whispered to her, when they all stood together watching Joren and his friends talking quietly at their table.

She protested, saying she wasn’t senior enough, but they all backed Neal in appointing her, including Prince Gavain and Cleon, who was a fourth-year now. After that, she put her own feelings aside and did her best to speak for the group. She was glad when some of the other fourth-years and Balduin of Disart, the biggest third-year page, backed her up.

She’d be lucky if Joren ever truly decided to leave her alone, Kel thought, as she followed her friends out of the mess hall after the confrontation. It was depressing to think she might always be looking over her shoulder for him.

When she got back to her room, wanting nothing more than to collapse into bed, she found that the ugly dog had returned. He was curled up on her bed, apparently asleep. At the sight of him, Kel sighed. “Shoo,” she said, and his crooked tail began to beat against the coverlet. He lifted his head, his tongue lolling out. “Lalasa?”

Her new maid ducked out of the dressing room, holding a tunic that Kel had torn that afternoon. “You’re back early, my lady. I haven’t had the chance to put the kettle on for tea yet.”

“That’s all right, I’m just here for my books. I was going to finish some schoolwork in Neal’s room before bed. I thought you took the dog to Stefan Groomsman?” Before riding class that morning, she had begged the chief hostler to look after the ugly dog. Pages weren’t allowed to have pets.

“I did, my lady, on my honor. He must have jumped in through the window while I was mending your tunic.”

Kel whistled softly, impressed despite herself. It was about four feet from the ground to her windowsill, and she didn’t know how he’d found the right window when he had known her for less than a week now.

Shaking her head, she began to gather up her books. She mustn’t be tempted to let the dog stay. “Well, could you take him back to Stefan tomorrow?” she asked.

“Of course, my lady.”

When she returned from Neal’s room just before lights out, the dog was still curled up on her bed, and Lalasa had set a kettle to boil over the fire. Kel settled on her bed with a cup of willow tea and her history book open on her lap, ready to skim through the last bit of reading she had to do before tomorrow. “You’re not staying,” she said to the dog, very quietly so that Lalasa wouldn’t hear and think that Kel was talking to her.

The next night, Master Oakbridge found a new place at the banquet for Kel. Though he’d cautioned her that by the strictest terms of protocol a second-year page was not senior enough for the duty, he appointed her to wait on the arch-priestess of the Great Mother Goddess, and no one objected to her presence there. The arch-priestess sat at a table near the front of the room with Eda Bell and Hakuin Seastone, Lord Thom of Trebond, and Hilma Cloudhammer, a mage visiting from the City of the Gods. Kel was terrified that she would do something wrong, but the Shang warriors made it clear that she had their confidence. They kept their dining companions busy, and smiled encouragingly at Kel whenever she brought a new dish to the table.

Only once did any of the other guests at the table take notice of her. She had just laid a slice of venison on Lord Thom’s plate when he blinked up at her, as though surprised to see her standing there. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Startled, she smiled at him.

“It’s not legal,” said Hilma Cloudhammer, who sat beside him. Kel tensed, worried that she was talking about her. The merchants she’d waited on during her first night of banquet service that year had objected strongly to being served by a female page.

“Not legal?” said Lord Thom, raising his eyebrows. “He changed the law. It’s perfectly legal _now_.”

“The king hasn’t been the head of the Council of Mages since the Council of Mages was _formed_ by Newlin the First,” she retorted. “It’s completely without precedent in Tortall.”

Kel relaxed, but began listening more carefully as she served Eda Bell and Hakuin Seastone across the table. She felt very conscious of the king on the dais behind her, just a few tables away.

Lord Thom shrugged. “I’m just glad it’s not still me.”

Hilma frowned. “When were you Lord High Chancellor?”

“For nearly two months at the beginning of 451, before I managed to convince him I was simply too busy to run the council _and_ the new university. Then he set his sights on poor Harailt of Aili, so I put Harailt on the university board. He’s more personable than I am, anyway, so I make him deal with the students and their problems. Everybody wins, including that bejeweled peacock who’s now Lord High Chancellor.”

She snorted. “Oh, you’re going to be in so much trouble.”

Their goblets were nearly empty, Kel noticed. As she returned from the serving room with a jug of wine, she glanced toward the dais. Waiting on the arch-priestess and her companions had put Kel closer to the royal family than she’d ever been before — the king, the queen, and their youngest child, Prince Alexander. She paused for a moment, staring up at the ruler whose domain she wanted to serve so much.

She had seen King Roger up close once before, when he had given a short speech before dinner on the last day of the previous year, thanking them for their help in the spidren hunt and wishing them all a restful summer. Her probationary year, she thought sourly, trying to judge him impartially now as she had then. He was a fine speaker; she recalled being caught up in his words in spite of herself. He was uncommonly handsome, and he had a regal presence. She recalled that the air had seemed to leave the room with him briefly, after he had swept out of the mess hall that evening.

Her probationary year hadn’t been fair. In the king’s original proclamation allowing girls to try for their knighthood, there had been no mention of probation, and yet Roger had allowed it. And she didn’t think it was fair for a king to appoint himself Lord High Chancellor of the Council of Mages. Master Arne had covered the governing councils in her history and law classes, and Kel knew that they were each supposed to govern themselves for the most part, acting as a check on the monarch’s power. Could she serve a king who wasn’t fair?

Of course, it’s not really up to me, she thought, remembering that she was still holding a full jug of wine. She began to top up the goblets on the table, pouring carefully. He was her king, so she would have to serve him, whether or not he did things like let Lord Wyldon put her on probation. Most likely, she would never even work up the courage to ask him why he’d done it.

No matter how many times Lalasa brought him to Stefan Groomsman, the dog kept returning. Usually he bounced in through the window around dawn, while Kel was in the middle of a pattern dance with her glaive, and curled up on her bed to watch. Often the sparrows rode inside on his back; Lalasa had taken to giving him a treat when no sparrows fell off.

She was going to have to name him, Kel realized one morning in late October, as she was putting away her practice glaive. Autumn was well on its way to winter, and it was becoming clear that the dog was here to stay. She had lost the battle.

“Lalasa?”

The older girl looked up from her chair by the fireplace, where she sat mending one of Kel’s shirts. “Yes, my lady?”

“Have you started calling the dog anything? I mean, is there a name for him that just seems to fit, that’s occurred to you?”

She shook her head. “Nothing but ‘Dog,’ my lady. I’d always thought he was yours to name, if you decided to keep him.”

“I think it’s more that he’s decided to keep _me_.” She began to get dressed, thinking. At Mindelan, the naming of animals was usually given over to her nieces and nephews, which led to an interesting variety of names. Kel wasn’t very creative herself, or at least she’d never thought so. She’d named her pony Chipper, when she was young enough to have just learned the word, and to know that it fit his cheerful disposition. What did people name animals for, if not their attributes? Who had chosen Peachblossom’s name, she wondered, and why?

As she put on her practice jacket, Kel regarded the dog impartially. His head had always reminded her of an axe blade, but she wasn’t about to name a dog ‘Axe.’ Nor did she think it was right to name him something like ‘Sausage,’ after how they had met. She sighed. His coat was largely dappled gray and white, but ‘Dapple’ was more of a name for a horse. She supposed she could call him ‘Spot,’ unoriginal though it was, but his scattering of black spots was not one of his more prominent features.

“He’s been digging in the mud again,” observed Lalasa. “I’ll give him a bath, my lady, as soon as I’ve finished with this, and give your blanket a good scrubbing too.”

Kel smiled at her. Lalasa was so patient about getting things clean again. No matter how much dirt or blood Kel ground into her clothes, she always managed to get it out; no matter how thickly the dog coated himself in mud, she bathed him white again without complaint. At first, Kel had been startled to see how much white _was_ in the dog’s fur. She had thought him mostly gray and brown when she’d first seen him.

A name occurred to her then, one she had heard many dogs being called before, though not for well over a year. “I suppose I could call him ‘Shiro,’” she said slowly, trying the name out on her tongue as she gazed at the dog. “It’s Yamani for ‘white,’ for his fur, and it’s a common enough name for dogs in the Islands.”

“Shiro it is, then,” said Lalasa, holding up Kel’s shirt to the light, to examine her work. “It suits him, I think.”

Over breakfast, Kel realized that she had been wrong about one thing. She may have lost the first battle to the dog, but there were many battles to come, in the war to keep Lord Wyldon from finding out about Shiro. She pondered her next move as she ate, one ear on her friends’ conversation.

“I swear to you,” Merric was saying to Neal, “if you say one more word about Lady Uline’s beautiful eyes or musical voice, I will drown you in the duck pond.”

Kel smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. Lately it had become less fun to tease Neal about the way he mooned over the ladies of the court, and she didn’t like to wonder why. Ignoring Neal’s response, she busied herself with cutting up her ham with her belt knife. That was harder work than it should have been, because she kept forgetting to ask her parents for a new knife, one that would hold an edge for longer than it took to sharpen it. She shook her head. Since she’d begun her page training, it seemed like she had a dozen things on her mind all the time. She hoped that soon she would get better at keeping track of them all.

When she got back to her room to wash up before lunch, she was greeted by a surprise: Lalasa stood in the doorway of the dressing room, eyes wide and frightened, holding a fireplace poker like a glaive. She relaxed when she saw Kel, lowering the poker. “Oh my lady, I’m so glad it’s you.”

“What on earth happened?” asked Kel, noting through her surprise that Lalasa’s stance had improved greatly over the past few days. The self defense lessons were working.

Lalasa’s cheeks were red with fury. “There was a man in the room, not twenty minutes ago. He left _that_ ,” she said, pointing to a small package on the desk, wrapped in cloth. “I hadn’t wanted to touch it. I screamed and told him to get out, and Shiro bit him, and then he vanished.”

“Vanished how?” asked Kel, staring at the package on the desk. “Out the door?”

“Into thin air, my lady. He started to — fade when he saw me, and then he disappeared when Shiro lunged at him. He bled on the floor a little bit, though.” She inhaled deeply, trying to recover her composure. “I’ll clean it up now.”

Kel glanced at the spots of blood on the flagstones, and then she crossed to the desk and unwrapped the package. The wrapping was the same red silk and gold ribbon as that which had concealed her jar of bruise balm. Underneath it she found a narrow, unmarked box, containing a sheathed belt knife. She stared at it, stunned.

Like the sheath, the hilt was intricately carved gold, studded with small amethysts. The blade itself was ordinary steel, apart from a gold-washed ricasso. She frowned, trying to decide what kind of person might have left this for her. It was the exact opposite of the knife she would have chosen for herself. If she’d had this kind of money to spare, she would have spent it on a better quality blade.

There was a note in the box, she realized. She set the knife down on the desk to read it. _It’s enchanted to never lose its edge,_ the note read, _so there’s no need to sharpen it._ It was written in a cramped, ornate hand, and was unsigned. Frowning again, Kel put down the note, plucked a hair from her head, and picked up the knife again, to test out the blade.

Pleasantly surprised by the result, she turned back to Lalasa, who was scrubbing away at the blood spots. “What did the man look like?”

“Bearded,” she replied, with audible disgust. “He was wearing a black hooded cloak, so I didn’t get a good look at him, but he had a beard. It was red.”

Those words called up the image of a face, but Kel couldn’t guess why Thom of Trebond would be leaving expensive gifts for her. She’d have to think about it later, though. If she didn’t hurry, she was going to be late for lunch.

Kel groaned at the thought of another Sunday spent doing punishment work. “I have to run,” she said, as she struggled out of her practice clothes. “But I think I know who that man was, and I’m going to have a talk with him. I promise, he won’t ever bother you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few lines were taken from _Page_.
> 
> There’s some ambiguity in _Lioness Rampant_ as to whether or not Alex’s father is still alive, so I decided to kill him off somewhere in the middle of _In the Hand of the Goddess_ , and make that a factor in Alex drifting away from most of his friends.
> 
> Where is Raoul? Raoul is fine, don’t worry, he’s just not in charge of the King’s Own. He’ll appear at some point.
> 
> The wifi in my apartment went down midway through proofreading this chapter, so I posted it from my phone. Hopefully the formatting didn’t get screwed up somewhere along the way.


	15. Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, of course, not the end. But this story was getting far too long (what _am_ I doing with my life?), and the next part is very different in terms of perspective and scope, so I thought it best to end it here for now. Part two, which is more or less the evil version of _Squire_ , will commence shortly.
> 
> I sincerely regret any paleontology-related errors I may have made in this chapter.

**453 H.E.**

That night, Kel left her study group a little early, claiming she was too tired to think. After initially heading in the direction of the pages’ wing, she doubled back around toward the teachers’ quarters, giving the library where she’d left her friends a wide berth. Aside from Neal, she hadn’t told any of her friends about the mysterious gifts, and she hadn’t mentioned the knife to any of them.

She glanced down at her hip, where her old knife hung on her belt. It wasn’t a very good knife, but she liked the weight of it, and the ordinary leather hilt and sheath. Her new knife embarrassed her.

She hadn’t minded the bruise balm. It was useful, and she could share it with her friends without having to explain to them where it had come from. That gaudy knife, on the other hand, demanded explanation. If anyone saw it, it would be a clear sign that somebody was treating her differently from the other pages. Nobody in her family could have afforded such a gift. Nobody in her family would have thought she’d even want it.

With a sigh, Kel began to climb the staircase Lord Thom had descended on the night he had caught her and Neal fighting with Joren and his henchmen. That was the crux of the matter, really, that he was treating her differently. She was glad he wished her well, but she didn’t like being set apart from the other pages more than she already was. And she wanted to know why he was doing it. She had her suspicions, but wanted to hear an explanation from him.

The trouble was, the Gifted pages switched teachers every month, and she was fairly certain that Lord Thom had an apartment elsewhere in the palace. She wasn’t even sure which set of rooms in the teachers’ wing was his, and she had no confidence she’d find him there this time of night, only the hope that he kept odd hours the way mages had a reputation for doing.

At the end of the corridor, she saw a sliver of light under a door. She peered at the bronze nameplate beside it, squinting to read it in the darkness. Smiling when she saw the name on it, Kel knocked on the door.

There came the sound of someone cursing her ancestry, followed by footsteps. After a moment the door opened, and Thom of Trebond stood there, illuminated from behind by bright, steady light. Wherever the light was coming from, it wasn’t a lamp or a fireplace. He stared at her, looking pale in the strange light. “Well,” he said finally, “you’d better come inside.”

Kel stepped into the room and looked around. What struck her immediately about it was the clutter. There were books and papers piled on every available surface, with the occasional gemstone or empty cup scattered amongst them. A teetering stack of books leaned precariously close to the fireplace, which had died down to embers. The room was lit by glass orbs mounted on the walls, too bright for her to look at directly without her eyes watering. They were clearly mage-lamps, but they were better than any she’d seen before.

Lord Thom stood before the fireplace, running a hand through his tousled red hair. “It’s the middle of the night and you’re not one of my students,” he said, “so I suppose this is about the gifts.”

She hadn’t expected him to get to the point so quickly. “Yes, my lord.”

He nodded. “I think I frightened your maid. In my defense, I didn’t realize you had one now — nor was I aware of the dog,” he added, with a frown. “Here, sit down. Would you care for something to drink? Wine, perhaps? No, I suppose not — you’re a child.”

He waved his hand casually, and a stack of books lifted themselves off one of the chairs near the fireplace and onto the floor. She sank warily into the chair. He shoved an assortment of scrolls off of the chair opposite hers and sat down, studying her face. “I won’t tell anyone about the dog,” he said. “I understand you’re not allowed to have them as pages, strictly speaking.”

She relaxed slightly. “That’s kind of you, my lord. Are you all right? Lalasa said he bit you.”

He waved his hand again, but nothing happened, and she realized he wasn’t doing magic this time. “Not very hard. I was largely incorporeal at that point, anyway. A healer fixed me up.”

“Incorporeal?”

“It’s a neat little trick. Gets me across the palace faster than walking, and I can bypass locked doors.”

“I just didn’t know that was possible, my lord.”

He grinned. “Your average mage can’t do it. Even Roger can’t quite manage it. That frustrates him to no end.”

There was something about him that reminded her of Neal, she realized, trying to imagine what it must have been like to have them both in the same classroom. She wished she’d been there to see it. “I wanted to thank you for the bruise balm, my lord. It’s been very useful.”

He nodded slowly. “But not the knife? You’re not wearing it, I notice. Not your style?”

“It seemed too fine to wear day-to-day,” she said carefully.

“No, it isn’t at all your style,” he murmured, looking thoughtful. “Now that I see you up close again, I can see I made a mistake there. I was thinking of someone else, I believe, but it’s clear now that _she_ would have found fault with it as well. Tell me, do knights enjoy sharpening their blades?”

Kel frowned, a little puzzled by the quick turns their conversation had taken, and then she considered his question. She’d always liked taking care of her practice weapons. When she was given punishment work scouring mail in the armory, part of her enjoyed the repetition, tiring as it was. It was satisfying to work hard at a task and then be able to see the results clearly in the shining metal. “Yes, my lord, I think they do.”

“Blast. Then she’d have laid into me for enchanting the knife. _I_ just thought it would save you some time.”

Kel studied him curiously. The light from the glass orbs on the walls was less forgiving than lamplight would have been, allowing her to see clearly the exhausted slump of his shoulders, the dark circles under his strange violet eyes, the wrinkles in his cloth-of-gold tunic. “Forgive me, my lord, but — are you talking about your sister?”

His face brightened. “Alanna would have loved a gold knife covered in amethysts at your age. But I’ll get you a different one. Silver, perhaps. Or a plain leather hilt? Plain leather it is, then.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” she said quietly, “but it seems wrong somehow, you giving me gifts. We don’t really know each other, and I’d prefer to be treated the same as the other pages.”

Lord Thom shook his head, looking annoyed. “You can’t honestly tell me that’s what everyone else is doing. I understand you may be inclined to brawl like an animal in an attempt to prove yourself to them, but I can assure you that most people don’t care. They will always take your sex into consideration. And even if everyone did wake up one day and decide to start treating you exactly the same as they treat the boys — well, _you’ll_ know that you’re different.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He was wrong about the reason for the fight he’d seen, but she wasn’t sure that he was wrong about anything else.

“So I don’t see why I shouldn’t help you,” he went on. “Somebody ought to.”

“But I don’t really understand why you want to.”

He cocked his head, looking puzzled. “Don’t you? I thought it was obvious. I want you to succeed. I want you to prove that it can be done — that if they hadn’t stacked the deck against my sister, she would have easily won her shield. Now, if you don’t like the presents, I’ll stop sending them to you, but I don’t see why you should refuse help — out of what, modesty? Pride? Well, I suppose I can understand pride. I’m told I have far too much of that myself.”

She smiled slightly. “They’re expensive gifts.”

“To you, perhaps. I’ve looked up your family, you know. Mithros, eight brothers and sisters. Your parents have entirely too many children, and I have none. Even _I_ can’t spend the entire Trebond fortune on just myself. I’d send my sister an allowance, but she’s too busy making her own fortune on the other side of the world, rescuing princesses and slaying immortals, like some knight errant in a fairy story.”

Kel stared at him, wondering how he knew that. Neal had said the twins were estranged — or rather, he had said that everyone thought they were estranged, including the king. She hesitated, finally recognizing the real gift he’d given her. “I should be getting back to my room, my lord, but — would you tell me a bit about her?”

Smiling broadly, Lord Thom settled back in his chair. “I’d be glad to,” he said, looking as though he had been waiting for someone to ask him that question for years.

**454 H.E.**

Spring along the Scanran border was usually warmer than it was shaping up to be in Corus that year, Alex thought as he knelt beside the hearth, putting more wood on the dying fire. It was getting late, but he knew Roger would be up for at least another hour or so, reading in his sitting room, and he ought to have light and warmth while he read. They had spent the past hour or so in idle conversation, after a few tense games of chess, while the fire had begun to burn low.

“Thom has told me that according to certain seers at the Carthaki University,” said Roger companionably from one of the armchairs behind him, “the entire world was once encased in snow and ice. This theory is not, however, without controversy.”

“I can believe it,” Alex muttered. “When was this, last Tuesday?”

Roger chuckled. “Several hundred million years ago.”

Alex let out a low whistle, intrigued. Who had even thought to look back that far? He wondered what became of mages who just kept looking further and further back in time. Did they lose their grip on the present? He got to his feet again, frowning when his knees cracked audibly.

“As I understand it, this theory is based largely on fleeting visions of ancient glaciers in tropical parts of the world,” Roger continued, as Alex settled back in his armchair and closed his eyes. “The further back in time one looks, you see, the less reliable visions become. It is easy to look back on the age when mammoths and monstrous bears roamed Tortall, or even the age when giant lizards traipsed across Carthak and most of Tortall was apparently a shallow sea, but if you try looking back further . . . Are you still listening?”

“Hm?” said Alex, blinking his eyes open. “I’m listening.”

In the chair across from his, Roger was rubbing the back of his neck, as though it pained him. “You looked so peaceful there. As though you’d fallen asleep. Gods, how late is it now?”

“After midnight, surely. You ought to rest.”

“I’m all right.” He took another sip from his cup of wine, which sat largely forgotten next to Alex’s cup, on the table between their chairs. “A headache, that’s all.”

Alex leaned toward him, resting his elbow on the armrest and his chin on his fist. “What’s the matter? All these marriage treaties?”

Roger sighed. “There has to be a way to speed up this business with the Yamanis. If I could just . . .”

He drummed his fingers on the armrest, gazing thoughtfully into the fire, and then murmured something that sounded like “Opals.”

Alex yawned. “What?”

“I was just thinking out loud.” He turned back to Alex, frowning slightly. “How many Dunlath opals do you think it would take to buy a princess?”

“You’re the jeweler, not me,” said Alex, with a shrug.

“True. Should I have gone with a Gallan princess for Jon?”

Alex shrugged again, not quite as invested in this conversation as Roger was. “Thought you wanted a better navy. The Yamanis have a lot of ships.”

“A lot of ships and a few rocky islands laid over multiple fault lines. So I sell my heir for some chit who dies in an earthquake, the ambassadors have to find a new girl and draw up new treaties, and meanwhile one of Matrurin’s daughters gets betrothed to Kouray of Queen’s Harbor.” He rubbed his temples. “I _knew_ he was upset with me for poaching the Wildmage. Not that I could keep her. That was stupid of me.”

Alex frowned, puzzled. “Where’s Queen’s Harbor?”

“Maren.”

“Well, that explains why I’ve never heard of it.” He tried to stifle another yawn, slightly annoyed that Roger was talking in code again. He’d always had a way of speaking around things rather than getting straight to the point, which could be profoundly irritating in the middle of the night. “Who cares?”

“I do, because the lad’s distantly related to Erhen the Second of Barzun. My idiot grandfather let one of the king’s third or fourth cousins live, and now his great-grandchildren are planning to marry royalty.”

Alex blinked, feeling suddenly more awake. “Which daughter?”

“The fourth.”

“Well, that’s not so bad. At least the oldest one isn’t marrying some Barzunni prince.”

Roger continued to scowl at him. “He isn’t a Barzunni prince. Barzun doesn’t exist anymore. His father is very wealthy, that’s all.”

“Besides,” Alex went on, “aren’t Matrurin’s youngest daughters . . . Is her mother his first wife, or his second? If she’s the second wife, the girl will probably go mad sooner or later anyway.” Royal genealogy was always hard to keep straight, but Alex knew that King Matrurin’s second wife was a princess from the Copper Isles, and he knew what happened to most of the members of that family after a while.

“The second, now that you mention it,” said Roger, looking more cheerful now. Then he yawned. “You’re right, it _is_ getting late. I should get some sleep — Thom’s leaving for the City of the Gods in the morning, and I’d like to see him off.”

Alex raised his eyebrows. “So would I. Seeing Thom conscious before noon is a rare event.”

Roger smiled at him. “You can join us for breakfast, though I imagine you’ll be bored. I have quite a lot of instructions for him.”

At the prospect of listening to a long and tedious conversation about magic and mage politics, Alex felt another wave of exhaustion overtake him. “I’d wager Thom knows most of them by now,” he said, getting to his feet. “He’s that used to spying on everyone in the City of the Gods for you. Does he really have to go there every spring?”

“The Mithran priests and the Daughters of the Goddess have been snowed in since October. I want to know what they’ve been up to all winter. And I want to know how my daughter is.”

There was no arguing with his king when he had his mind set on something. As he stifled another yawn, something else occurred to Alex. He paused on his way to the door, and turned back to look at Roger again. “How do the bone mages know? That those glaciers were there several hundred million years ago, I mean. For that matter, how do they know when those great lizards were around?”

Roger’s eyes lit up. “That’s an excellent question,” he said, sounding for all the world as though it weren’t the middle of the night, and Alex weren’t on his way out the door. “Until recently, the mages and scholars who study fossils could only determine their age by relative dating. You see, rocks are laid down in predictable layers over the eons, allowing their ages to be estimated by their location and by the kinds of fossils discovered in them, just as the age of a fossil can be estimated from the layer of rock in which it’s found. But about fifty years ago, a Carthaki mage developed a method by which rocks could be more accurately dated. It has long been held — and now it’s held by a majority of mages — that every substance in this world contains a kind of magic.”

Alex frowned. “Not me, surely. Everyone who examined me for magic when I was a boy said my feet were nailed to the ground.”

Roger smiled. “I said that, I believe. But I don’t mean the Gift, or even wild magic as it’s commonly understood. I’m talking about something else, something we don’t quite understand yet — but we can measure it, by a variety of techniques. I should clarify that — in many cases we can’t measure it directly, and what’s actually being measured is a rate of change. It’s slowly becoming clear that the underlying process behind so much of nature, perhaps the very fabric holding the universe together — is change.”

He was smiling, a slightly feverish light in his eyes, but Alex’s frown only deepened. Most of what seemed to fascinate Roger was too theoretical for his tastes. When it came to intellectual pursuits, Alex liked numbers and equations, which were solid, tangible things. “What’s changing, then, in this case?”

“Some minute aspect of certain types of rock appears to be changing over time — and very long periods of time. Millions of years. This is what has allowed scholars to absolutely date the entire world. It’s these data, in conjunction with those visions of earlier eras, which tell us when different creatures were alive.”

“And the world is millions of years old?”

He smiled again, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “Oh, no. Billions.”

That was longer than he could fathom. When he was faced with the idea of billions of years, the sniping and backstabbing that mages got up to in the City of the Gods every winter seemed even pettier than usual to Alex. “I’ll see you in the morning, all right?” he said, turning away again, toward the door that led to the stairs, and beyond that, the corridor. “Good night.”

“I think I’m going to host a tournament later this year,” said Roger brightly, when Alex had nearly reached the door. “When the leaves start to turn. I thought it would be a nice diversion for the young people, now that Gavain is a page.”

Alex paused again, turning back to him with a puzzled frown. Prince Gavain had never cared much for tournaments. “I suppose so.”

“Which reminds me, evidently Lord Cian of Torhelm has a daughter who wishes to be a page,” Roger remarked. “It’s interesting to see them coming out of the woodwork, isn’t it? I’d never realized before that so many girls might want to become knights.”

“Did Lord Cian mention that to you, sire?” asked Alex mildly. He often wondered where some of Roger’s information came from. Lord Cian was a minor bureaucrat, and not likely to be a confidant of the king.

“Fianola, I believe, is her name. She’s of an age to start her training shortly after Keladry becomes a squire, which is lucky. I recall Wyldon saying he would only consider allowing a second girl to start after the first one had finished her training.”

“I suspect Wyldon meant after she’d won her shield, not merely finished her page training.” But he remembered his encounter the past summer with Keladry in the tilting yard, alone there but for her oversized horse, remembered her obvious skill and steady, single-minded focus. Had she been a boy, she would have been Wyldon’s star student. He shook his head, faintly disgusted with the training master.

Roger waved that away, looking unconcerned by whatever Wyldon had or hadn’t meant. “You’ve met the Mindelan girl, haven’t you? What did you think of her?”

It was uncanny, the way he sometimes appeared to read Alex’s thoughts. As he always did in moments like this, Alex tried to ignore the sense of unease that prickled down his back, focusing instead on Roger’s question. “She’ll make a commendable knight. If not for the enemies she doubtlessly has, I’d feel confident in saying she’ll earn her shield on time, and have a fine career.”

Roger frowned. “That’s a shame. It’s hard enough work without making enemies, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is.” There was something unsettling him here that wasn’t simply Roger’s mind-reading trick. Alex frowned, trying to choose his words carefully. “It’s lucky that she isn’t a mage, or else they would say she won her shield by magic alone.”

Roger stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

“It wouldn’t do to have rumors like that flying around.”

“No — no, it wouldn’t.”

Alex leaned against the wall, gazing at him thoughtfully. “I’ve never asked you, sire — why _did_ you write that law, allowing girls to train as pages? It wasn’t popular — most people were either against it at the time, or simply didn’t care one way or the other.”

Roger’s attention was on the fire in the hearth. After watching the flames crackle and dance for a few moments, he said, “I suppose I was thinking about my legacy. I’m certainly old enough to start worrying about how I’ll be remembered.”

That wasn’t it at all, thought Alex, but he didn’t press him. “I should get some rest.”

“You say the law wasn’t popular, but that isn’t true anymore. It’s gaining in popularity.”

“That’s good to hear,” said Alex, feeling uneasy again. He wondered what Roger had done, to make the nobility change their minds so quickly on this front. Now that he thought about it, over the past few years he had often heard the palace minstrels singing songs about the lady knights of old, whenever he made an obligatory appearance at some banquet or party. Was that all it had taken, a few more songs and stories? “Would you have wanted Princess Jessamine to become a page?” he asked.

She had wanted to try for her knighthood, he recalled. At the king’s request, Alex had given all of Roger’s children fencing lessons when they were young. Had he been consulted, before Roger and Delia had talked their daughter out of applying to become a page, he could have told them that she was as good with a sword as her brother Jon had been at her age, but that he wasn’t sure the day-to-day rigor of page training would suit her temperament. But they had never asked him what he thought of the idea, and so he’d never said anything.

Roger glanced up at him, looking annoyed. “Of course not.”

“I see. Good night, sire.”

“Oh yes, good night. Anyway, to return to the matter of the tournament — say you’ll put your name in the lists. Don’t try to escape to the border, or back to your fief.”

Alex frowned again, his hand on the doorknob. “You know I’m not very good at jousting.”

Roger shook his head, smiling fondly. “When will I finally manage to break you of your unfortunate tendency towards modesty? Perhaps never, at this point. After all, I’ve been trying since you were seventeen.”

Sometimes they found themselves talking at cross purposes for one simple reason: Roger was not a knight. He was a very skilled fencer, and he was the previous king’s nephew who had wanted a squire of his own and been granted one accordingly, but he wasn’t a knight.

“My height and weight put me at a disadvantage,” Alex explained patiently. “My technique is good, which means I can beat a bigger man who’s less experienced than I am, less skilled. But against a bigger man with equal skill, I’m going to lose.”

Roger’s face was still for a moment; he seemed to be thinking that over. Then he smiled again. “I’d like to design your tournament armor, if I may.”

Alex sighed. “All right. Just — no jewels, please. I want to look like myself.”

“Of course,” said Roger smoothly. “Nothing gaudy.”

A lingering sense of unease weighed down Alex’s shoulders, as he headed back to his rooms through the darkened corridors. The tournament worried him, perhaps. He tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that it was half a year away, and there was always a chance that Roger would change his mind before then, or even just forget about it. Or perhaps the Lord Provost would send him to the border, and he’d be forced to miss it — unless the king overrode the Lord Provost’s decision. He thought of the children in their garish page uniforms sitting in the stands, watching him lose to their training master or some other mountain of a man, and sighed.

Somehow it all seemed rather unimportant right now — the tournament, Lord Wyldon’s probable apoplexy at the thought of a second girl page, the City of the Gods, countries that did or did not exist anymore. Trying to forget about it all, he crept through the shadows toward his bed, looking forward to oblivion.

As it turned out, the local army commander had overstated the situation when he had told them that there were no bandits within a good twenty miles of the River Hasteren.

It was hard, bloody work clearing bandits out of border country, and Kel did it with the knowledge that the results were temporary. The cracked earth and dry grass spoke of another poor harvest to come; the hollow eyes and gaunt faces of those she helped the soldiers arrest spoke of other bad harvests, other long droughts before this one.

At one point, while riding at the back of the patrol with the other pages, she heard shouts from up ahead as a small group of bandits was sighted by the soldiers ahead of them. As Kel squinted in the sunlight, trying to see exactly what was happening, she heard Jasson of Eldorne mutter under his breath, “There but for the will of the gods go I.”

She glanced at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I’m from Hill Country. Everybody else thinks we’re all half bandit.”

Kel considered that, as she watched the soldiers round the bandits up. Her own father’s side of the family was composed almost entirely of merchants; she was comfortable enough with the idea that only her father’s title separated her from them. She was less comfortable with the idea that only an accident of birth may have prevented her from becoming a bandit herself. It was true that she had never chosen to be born a baron’s daughter, just as the people they were hunting had never chosen to be born into poverty. But hadn’t they chosen their crimes?

Nearly a week after Kel’s fight with the bandits, the lord of the local fief rode into the army outpost to see how their work was progressing. He arrived just before supper, as the pages were making their way through the fading evening light to the mess hall, and the army captain hurried out to greet him. Kel watched them for a few moments, curious. There was something apologetic about Captain Gunnar’s posture.

Lord Tirragen dismounted gracefully, and his squire took the reins of his horse. To reach the stable, his squire had to pass through the line of pages streaming toward the mess. Walking directly in front of Kel, Jasson stumbled in his haste to wave to him, and she nearly bumped into him. “Hey Lerant!” he hissed, trying not to attract Lord Wyldon’s attention. “Come to help us round up bandits?”

“I can think of nothing I’d rather do with my time,” said his brother gloomily. “Out of my way, brat.”

Jasson punched him lightly on the shoulder, still grinning up at him, and the stream of pages parted to let Lerant and the horses pass by. It was the last they saw of either the knight or his squire until after supper, as Lord Tirragen chose to eat with the officers in the commander’s quarters, with Lerant to wait on them. To Kel’s surprise, Lord Wyldon joined them, leaving the pages in the care of Sergeant Ezeko and the Shang warriors.

After dinner always came an hour of lessons — on map reading, tactics and strategy, local history, or the flora and fauna commonly found in Hill Country. Tonight’s lesson saw Eda Bell cheerfully listing the poisonous plants of the region, as well as explaining how best to defend oneself from a hill lion versus a bear. “Nice to see someone’s having fun,” Neal muttered, as they trudged back to the barracks afterward. The wind had started to pick up, promising another cold desert night.

Kel shook her head, smiling at him. In his defense, he had more lessons than she did over the summer. When the pages went out into the dry, rocky hills every day, to act as scouts and backup archers for the soldiers they shadowed, Neal frequently stayed behind at the fort, helping the army healer in the infirmary. Often Prince Gavain, who had a Gift for healing as well, joined him. “If ever you find yourself between a hill lion and a field of stinging nettles,” she replied, “you’ll thank her for teaching you what to do.”

“What to do? Die, probably, knowing me.”

Ahead of them, a shadow melted out of the darkness between the barracks, and fell into step with Lord Wyldon. They talked for a little while, in voices too soft for Kel to make out what they were saying. Then the unknown man stopped, waiting as the pages walked by, and she saw that it was Alexander of Tirragen.

He was frowning as he studied their faces in the dim light, but his face broke into a smile when he saw her. “Is that Keladry of Mindelan?”

“Good evening, my lord,” she said, as he began to walk alongside her, at the back of the line of pages.

“How’s that vicious horse of yours?” he asked, and Neal glanced curiously at them.

She hadn’t told him about meeting the knight last year, Kel realized. She must have forgotten to, after Neal had returned to court from Fief Queenscove at the end of the summer. “He’s very well, thank you, my lord.” A small part of her wanted to add, teasingly, “I’ll make sure to tell him you asked after him,” but she kept that to herself. He may have taken a friendly interest in her, but that didn’t make them friends.

“Good. I hear you recently fought off a group of bandits.”

No doubt he’d had the story from Lord Wyldon over dinner. It was his land they were on, so she wasn’t surprised he wanted to know about the incident. “Yes, my lord. I was in the group of pages that found their camp.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

She left out the part where the older boys had been too surprised to lead them, telling the story as though they’d decided as a group how best to defend themselves. If he’d heard a slightly different story from the training master, Lord Alexander kept it to himself, listening quietly until Kel was finished with her brief account.

“Well done. We’ll never manage to root them out entirely, of course.”

She nodded. It was the same way in the Yamani Islands, where the land was so mountainous that bandits would always have a place to hide, and meanwhile the coasts were constantly buffeted by sea raiders.

“Captain Gunnar hails from a very flat part of the country,” he added dryly. “Tell me, did you think you’d make it this far, when you started your page training?”

She gave that some consideration. “No, my lord. To be honest, I hadn’t thought they’d let me stay past the first year.”

He lowered his voice, already soft by nature, another degree or two. Walking slowly, they had let the other pages move ahead of them. “Wyldon has always prided himself on being extremely fair. At some point, I imagine it occurred to him that forcing you to go home would have been unfair.”

And yet, she thought, the probationary year had been Lord Wyldon’s idea, hadn’t it?

“Did you start wearing that weighted vest a month early, like I suggested?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. And I increased the weight of my practice weapons a little, too.”

He nodded, looking pleased. “Thought you might have. Here’s another question: were you able to keep wearing the vest, day in and day out, in the middle of summer, when nobody was forcing you to?”

That was a better question, she thought. It was one thing to make a hard decision, and another to actually follow through with it. “Yes, my lord.” Some days had been easier than other days, but she didn’t think she had to tell him that.

“Good.” He nodded to her; they had reached the barracks. “Glad to see you’re doing well, Keladry. Good night.”

“Good night, my lord.” She watched him stroll away into the darkness. After a moment, he began to whistle softly. That was an old tune, one she’d heard Eda Bell whistling as they’d ridden south together into Hill Country. She had tried to teach it to them once, after dinner, but the lyrics were in a dying language none of the pages knew.

“What was _that_ about?” asked Neal.

**440 H.E., Fourteen Years Earlier**

The Royal Forest was so quiet he could hear the snow melting, amidst the birdsong and the measured step of their horses’ hooves. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” said Delia, who rode beside him astride a chestnut mare.

Alex tensed slightly, bracing himself for a long, dull conversation. “Oh?”

She glanced over her shoulder, at the handful of ladies-in-waiting and men of the King’s Own who rode behind them. “Would you like to race?”

Delia nudged her horse into a gallop and he followed, though it hardly seemed fair, a knight of the realm racing against the queen. She reined in a few moments later, when they were well out of earshot of their chaperones but still within sight. Alex slowed to a walk with a sigh.

“He had him killed, didn’t he?” she asked, stroking her horse’s mane.

“I’m sorry?”

She met his eyes evenly. “Jonathan. His cousin, I mean. Roger had him killed, didn’t he?”

He studied her face, thinking. It was always better to say too little than too much. “Is that what you think?”

Her eyes flashed. “Tell me I’m wrong. If there’s anyone who knows the truth about it besides him, it’s you. You’ve known him for years.”

Sunlight glinted brightly on the remains of what would likely be the last snowfall before winter ceded to spring, blinding him for a moment. He blinked, recalling another ride through the Royal Forest, in what felt like another lifetime now. “What do you want of me? To tell you you’re wrong? You’re wrong, then. Happy?”

Delia shook her head. “What I want is certainty. I think he paid those bandits off, and I want to know for sure. I heard about some of them dying suddenly before they could even speak to the magistrate, without a mark on them. Tell me he wasn’t responsible for _that_.”

That other ride through the forest had been seven years ago, Alex thought, considering the present conversation as though from a distance. How had so much time passed since then? With less than a year to go before he passed his Ordeal, he and Roger had been riding through the Royal Forest on a cool day in early spring, when Roger had suggested they just keep going. Fief Conté was, after all, not so far away. They could reach it by nightfall if they didn’t get bogged down in mud.

The rain had started just after sundown, soaking them through by the time they’d reached the causeway. They’d warmed themselves with a bottle from Roger’s wine cellar, while they waited for a servant to draw them each a bath, and for a late supper to be cooked. There were very few servants in residence that night, as Roger was never around and their arrival had come as a surprise.

A hour or so later, wearing a fur-lined robe and beginning to get drunk, Roger set about entertaining his squire. With his hair still wet from his bath, he told him stories about his days in the City of the Gods and Carthak, about his studies and his travels through the Eastern and Southern Lands, until Alex was hanging on his every word and laughing at all the clever parts. And then he slowly began to circle the conversation back around to Jonathan.

“The king and queen,” he had said, “are so lucky that Jon survived the Sweating Sickness. A child like that, come to them so late in life, is so precious. Fragile, really. One wonders if — well, one almost wonders — well, _you’ll_ survive the Chamber of the Ordeal, at any rate. You’re strong.”

“You don’t think Jon will survive?” Alex remembered asking, through the haze of wine that made him feel less invested in the question than he might otherwise have been.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t like to criticize my aunt and uncle, but they’ve coddled him more than I would have, were he my son.”

Alex frowned. There was something about the way he’d said the word _aunt_ , following so closely on the heels of _queen_ , some bitter edge to his voice that permeated the wine. “You don’t like the queen?”

Roger froze, expressionless. The mask had slipped for an instant; he had shown Alex something he hadn’t meant to. “I wouldn’t say that exactly,” he said, smiling warmly again. “I must admit, though, that she and I have never been all that close. I don’t blame her, of course. It must have been very difficult for her.”

“What?” asked Alex, curious.

Roger sighed. “Do you know what they teach young noblewomen, in those convents? That their worth depends on their ability to have children. Imagine being taught that, growing up, and then being presented at court and marrying the crown prince himself — and then discovering that you can’t bear children. Alex, my childhood was a series of dead cousins. Miscarriages, stillbirths, until finally one managed to survive. And by then, I had already been running this fief for about three years.”

Alex watched his face in the firelight, conscious suddenly of the child Roger had once been. Had the queen blamed her nephew for continuing to survive, when her own children kept dying? “You were — twelve when your father died?” he asked.

Roger smiled sadly. “Barely. I had to grow up very quickly. And of course, at that point I was the heir to the throne.” He had, perhaps, poured them each some more wine while that remark sank in. “I’d always been aware that I was next in line after my father, as soon as I was old enough to be aware of such things. My uncle raised me to it.”

“He raised Jon to it, too,” Alex pointed out, but when he looked at Roger in the firelight he saw all the things that made him distinctly not Jon: his trim beard and powerful frame; the height he had grown into years ago, long before Alex had met him; the rich timbre of his laugh that made warmth course through Alex’s body, like mulled wine flooding his veins.

“True. We had the same education, in many respects.” He studied him thoughtfully. “In some ways, you know what kind of pupil Jon is better than I do.”

At that point, Jon’s flaws began running through Alex’s head — the essays he’d fallen asleep in the middle of writing, the mathematics problems he’d tried to persuade Alex to do for him, the extra sword drills he’d skipped. Of course, nobody could have finished all the work they’d been given every week; Jon had the same flaws as everyone else, more or less. And yet, wasn’t he supposed to be better than the rest of them? He was the crown prince, after all.

“It must have come as a surprise when Jon was born,” he remembered saying to Roger a little later on in the conversation.

“It certainly did. By that point, I’d given up on ever having a living cousin on that side of the family. I was fifteen then, nearly a man grown.”

And as the night had worn on, Roger had asked him — by not asking him at all, by letting the words remain unspoken in the gathering shadows — whether it might be better to let a man grown, a man of the world, become king after Roald died, instead of an untested boy. Left unspoken, it seemed, these words need not be answered by action on Alex’s part. All he might have to do would be to step back and let events unfold.

Duke Gareth, of course, was furious that Roger had taken his squire away from the palace overnight without telling anyone where they were going.

That ride had occurred a little later in the spring than it was now, Alex recalled. Just a week or two after his visit to Fief Conté, he and the other squires — and Alanna — had left for Persopolis, where Jon had nearly died in the desert. Alex recalled feeling rather fortunate, at the time, that Jon had left him out of his plans, because he still wasn’t entirely sure what he would have done, had he been included. Of course, by that point, his friends had generally started including him less often in their plans.

“What good will certainty do you?” he asked Delia now. “Do you suppose you’ll sleep easier at night, knowing you’ve married a murderer? You’re the queen now; surely you got everything you wanted.”

She pursed her lips. “I just want to _know_. I knew he had plans, but he never told me anything definite — not the whole shape of them, just what I could do to help. I always assumed —”

“What?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “What did you assume?”

She sighed. “I suppose I thought he wanted to be the power behind the throne. The prime minister, perhaps, when Jonathan became king. I thought, why else would he be invested in me marrying Jon? It sounds stupid now, I realize, but he was always very cagey about his exact plans. And then after Jon died . . .”

Alex shook his head, smiling faintly. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, he suspected. “What you want is absolution. You want me to tell you that everything is fine, and we’ve done nothing wrong. Neither of us are complicit in any way.”

She glared at him again, and then looked away, toying thoughtfully with her reins. “Of course, if the Council of Lords had any inkling of what he’d done, they’d be forced to try him for treason, wouldn’t they?”

He stared at her, horrified. “They’ve _never_ tried a king for treason before. And then what, we’d crown little Jon?”

Delia met his eyes coolly. “Well, they’d have to. After Jonathan, the line of succession gets murky. We’d have a host of third and fourth cousins fighting over the throne.”

Alex was silent for a moment, marveling at her ambition. “He’d be infamous before he could even walk — crowned as an infant, the son of a traitor king. We’d descend into civil war before year’s end. If Roger were tried.”

She frowned. “You don’t think the Council of Lords would have the nerve to do it, do you?”

“Oh, some of them would. Lord Imrah, I think, and probably Duke Gareth. Myles of Olau, certainly. Perhaps a few of the Minchis. But not all of the Council, and probably not even a majority. After all, if they found him guilty, they’d have to execute the king.” He glanced back toward the men of the King’s Own. “You should just keep your mouth shut about it. Bad enough we rode away from our guard.”

Her lips twisted into a sour smile. “Don’t worry about that. They probably just think we’re having an affair.”

“Gods forbid,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “I hope that one gets back to Roger. He’d find it hilarious.”

They rode on for a few minutes in silence, and then she said, “You were there the day Jonathan died, weren’t you?”

He glanced up at her again, but didn’t reply.

She smiled faintly. “I remember hearing at the funeral that you were wounded in his defense. His only protector, amidst a horde of bandits. Do you suppose you were meant to be Roger’s contingency plan, if the bandits had failed?”

He looked away again.

“You know, it’s funny,” she said quietly, as they rode on slowly, waiting for the men of the King’s Own and her ladies-in-waiting to catch up to them. “When he insisted we name the baby Jon, I thought it was rather sweet at first. I thought, ‘How sad, he really loved him, he must miss him.’ But now that he’s king, whenever we talk about Prince Jonathan, we’ll always be talking about Roger’s son, not his cousin. He didn’t want to honor him, he wanted to erase him.”

Alex didn’t see why it had to be one or the other; a person could have two motives for doing something. “Difficult to erase someone entirely,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she said, frowning as though puzzled. “You’re sorry he’s dead, aren’t you?”

“Of course. Jon was my friend.” But he hadn’t wanted him to be king, he thought, the words hovering just within reach of his tongue. He had thought Jon too young, too sheltered, too selfish; he had watched his friend grow and not grow up, not enough, and then one summer’s day Roger had strode into the palace with the air of a king. He left those words unsaid, as he so often left words unsaid.

Delia’s attention was on a nightingale that had just lighted on a branch overhead. “Do you remember the hill lion?” she asked, her voice slightly dreamy. “It happened not long before you left for the palace, to begin your page training — only a few weeks before you left, I believe.”

“I do,” said Alex, surprised she’d brought that up. He could see it again in his mind’s eye, golden brown against the bare trees and the last of the snow. In real life, nearly fifteen years ago now, the hill lion had blended into the sparse tawny grass and the red sandstone hills. A pair of children having a grand adventure on the northern edge of the lakeshore, out of sight of his family’s men-at-arms, they hadn’t seen it until it was nearly too late.

He’d had his blunt practice sword with him, which had saved them. He’d put himself between the lion and Delia, who had been seven years old and screaming. Alex remembered the tension in his muscles as he’d settled into the already familiar guard position, the cold thrill of squaring off against something that could kill him so easily.

He had made it wary, drawing blood when the lion tried to lunge at them. At some point before he’d managed to wound the beast, Delia had come to her senses and started gathering rocks to throw. Her first rock went wide of its target, but her second clipped its head, making it snarl at her. Dimly, he recalled her snarling back at it. Together they had held off the hill lion until the men-at-arms found them and finished it off. His parents had been horrified; dimly, he recalled his mother’s tears, her arms holding him tightly, and then the sting of the switch in his father’s hand. Like Jon, he was the only child they’d managed to have.

“You were never really frightened of it, were you?” Delia asked, and he remembered too that when she had arrived at the palace nearly a decade later, after leaving the convent in the City of the Gods, he hadn’t recognized her at first. The Daughters of the Goddess had transformed her into a lady. “I always thought you were just putting on a brave face so I wouldn’t be scared, but now I’m not sure.”

He thought about that, but it was easier to remember facts than feelings. There was the lion, and there was the sword in his hand; his balance had been good, and the dry earth flat and solid under him. “No, I don’t think I was.”

“You were very gallant. Protecting your queen, even then.” She fell silent for a few minutes, watching the forest pass them by as they rode slowly along the path, through the birdsong and the melting snow.

“I found myself talking with Thom of Trebond for a while at the party last night,” she remarked, when he was about to suggest they turn back toward the palace. “He’s a very interesting man, if you don’t mind all the barbed comments.”

She glanced at him. “What about Lady Alanna? Are you sorry she’s gone? Do you miss having someone around who’s your equal?”

“Do you?” said Alex, meeting her eyes coolly. “Do you miss dancing with her?”

Delia smiled. “You know, I _do_ sometimes. Poor Roger. He’s always hated being around people who dislike him, hasn’t he? He pretends he doesn’t mind, but it gets under his skin.”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “He keeps Thom around.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Lord Thom doesn’t dislike him at all, sharp tongue or no. They’re too much alike for that. And, well, surely _you_ know what’s going on there.”

He made a face, and she smiled sweetly at him again. “Be careful, won’t you?” she murmured. “I’d hate to lose you now.”

For a moment she looked like the girl she’d once been, and he returned the smile, feeling touched by her concern. “I’ll be all right,” he said, wanting to reassure her. “There aren’t any hill lions here.”

She sighed. “Oh darling. They’re everywhere, if you’re looking for them.”


End file.
